By Roxanne "Flashbulb" Starr
Claire Lomas built her name on refusing to be grounded. The paralyzed marathon walker turned aviator was doing what she'd made her life's work — pushing past limits, on camera — when she died.
An inquest has heard that Lomas was flying an adapted microlight aircraft in Jordan when it crashed into a large rock, according to the BBC. She was filming for an Apple series at the time, the broadcaster reported. The inquest is examining the circumstances of the crash; further details of the proceedings, including findings on cause, were not included in the available reporting.
Lomas became a household name in Britain after she was paralyzed from the chest down in a 2007 horse-riding accident and later completed the London Marathon in a robotic exoskeleton, a feat that made her a symbol of grit for disability campaigners nationwide. She went on to become a pilot, adapting aircraft controls to fly hand-operated planes and microlights — pushing the same boundaries in the air that she'd pushed on the ground.
The BBC's report is, so far, the only detailed account of the inquest available to this desk. We don't yet know what caused the crash, what the inquest concluded, or when the Apple series she was filming might air. Those are questions worth answering, and we'll follow the inquest as more testimony emerges.
For now, what's confirmed is simple and hard: a woman who spent nearly two decades proving that a body written off by doctors could still climb, walk and fly, died doing exactly that.
If I can't source it, you won't read it here.
— Compiled from reporting by the BBC.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."