GNR police are investigating the horrific death yesterday morning of an army parachutist who broke down on the A1 motorway near Lisbon.
Twenty-seven-year-old Diogo Lima was driving in a column of three vehicles that left army barracks in Aveiro, bound for Lisbon – when his truck broke down.
As he went to place the emergency triangle on the road – wearing his regulation reflective jacket “on a stretch with good visibility and no fog” – he was struck by a goods lorry which appears to have killed him almost instantly.
“Parachutist crushed on the A1” is how tabloid Correio da Manhã presents the story this morning, saying the road had to be closed for five hours following the tragedy.
Lima’s death preceded another accident, on the same spot, reports the paper – though this time there were no injuries.
The goods vehicle that is understood to have hit the young soldier belonged to a company of cleaning and hygiene products in Viseu, adds CM.
This is just the latest of a series of deaths of people who get out of their vehicles after accidents, or blown tyres.
Only recently, a young woman was killed outright on the IC19 near Lisbon as she returned to her car – which had run out of petrol – with a fuel can, and in July a young driver was fatally injured as he tried to change a tyre on Lisbon’s Vasco da Gama bridge.
