Jakson Follmann remembers the moment the plane’s engine died and everything went black. Then, an intense pain and cold rain falling on his body, IgbereTV reports.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, he called out for help, until he saw the beam of a flashlight shining through the wreckage of the fuselage.
It has been five years since the plane carrying Follmann and the rest of Brazilian football team Chapecoense Real ran out of fuel on the way to the final match of the South American Cup, slamming into the mountains outside Medellin, Colombia.
Seventy-one people were killed in the crash. Follmann, now 29 years old, is one of six who survived — though he lost his right leg below the knee.
“We were all so happy, so excited to go play for the title. Then from one day to the next, I lost my friends, I lost the source of my livelihood,” he said.
“After that, my biggest dream became something so simple: just to be able to walk again.”
In the half-decade since the one-time goalkeeper from the southern state of Santa Catarina has had to reinvent himself.
His football career cut short by the crash, he has found new life as a motivational speaker and Brazilian country singer
