Sher Paralympic adventure ended on Monday, September 2. Tracy Otto and her partner Jason Tabansky lost in the quarter-finals of the mixed team archery. In the individual event, she also failed to reach the semi-finals. A journey that perhaps ends a little too soon for this young American. However, the para-archer cannot help but feel a touch of pride.
Five years earlier, on October 24, 2019, all it took was a “thud” for the night to collapse. While the young woman, then 23, was spending the evening with her boyfriend Ricky Riessle, her former partner burst into her house. The latter, jealous, had already been violent towards her during their relationship. She had left him a month earlier.
READ ALSO Matt Stutzman, the “armless archer”, star of the Paralympic Games
“I heard his voice and I knew it was my ex,” she recalled to the BBC. It all happened very quickly. Her ex shot her current partner in the face, stabbed him in the back, hitting his lung. Then he attacked her.
Tracy Otto was punched, shot in the left eye, and stabbed in the neck. “I just killed my girlfriend and her new boyfriend,” the assailant said, confessing his crime to the police. He has since been serving a 40-year prison sentence. READ ALSO The incredible story of Zakia Khudadadi, from Taliban rule to Paralympic bronze […] Read more