At age 21, Oriana Pepper was living her dream.
A pilot, she was preparing to fly for one of Europe’s largest airlines. The young British woman had passed her flying theory exams and had traveled to Antwerp, Belgium, to complete her training for easyJet.
Less than a month later, she was dead — all because of a simple mosquito bite that ended up decaying her brain. A coroner said he’d “never seen a case like this before.”
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According to a Wednesday report from the Daily Mail, an inquest into Pepper’s 2021 death found she was infected with staphylococcus aureus via a mosquito bite, leading to an obstruction of blood vessels in the brain known as septic emboli.
The senior coroner in Suffolk, England, found that she died “as a result of a serious infection caused by an insect bite to the forehead.”
“An infection has entered Oriana’s skin following a bite by an insect,” Parsley said. “It’s then gone into the carotid artery of the neck and led to septic emboli in her brain.”
#UK #Suffolk Trainee pilot, 21, died days after being bitten on forehead by mosquito: Oriana Pepper ‘loved nothing better than to go flying’. https://t.co/Wgq9S1bAJG
— Solomon Phoenix (@SolomonPhoenix_) July 6, 2022
Parsley then addressed Oriana’s parents, Tristan and Louisa Pepper.
“I’ve never seen a case like this before,” he said.
“It’s just one of those things that’s just such an unfortunate tragedy for a young lady who clearly had a wonderful career and life ahead of her.”
Pepper had obtained her private and commercial pilot licenses in Phoenix, Arizona, where she met her boyfriend, James Hall. She then traveled to Oxford, where she completed her theory exams. The couple arrived in Antwerp on May 20.
Hall said the two were bitten several times by insects without any sort of reaction after they arrived.
“We were assured by locals it was normal for the area and time of year,” he said.
However, Pepper was taken to an emergency room on July 7 after the swelling from a bite “significantly worsened.” Hall said they were told she “had an infection, likely due to the mosquito bite.”
Pepper was provided antibiotics — but just two days later, she collapsed and “was delirious and had difficulty talking.”
She died in the hospital on July 12.
In spite of the tragedy, Pepper’s parents maintain their daughter lived her short life to the fullest.
Reading a prepared statement during the inquest, Tristan Pepper said his daughter “loved nothing better than to go flying with her dad and her brother Oliver, also a trainee commercial pilot.”
She described piloting as “having an office in the sky amongst the clouds,” her dad said.
“She had met someone she loved, she was training to be a commercial pilot and was fulfilling her dreams,” he added.
Her mother Louisa said they would try to pass on their daughter’s legacy as a pilot in some small way, noting that they had “set up a small scholarship to encourage other women pilots” to enter the field.
“That’s a positive thing from her life,” she said.
We can only pray now that Oriana Pepper is looking down at us from that office in the sky, knowing that her life on this earth — however short it was, however tragically random its end may have been — meant something.
