Bruce Collie has broken his silence after losing his daughter, Devyn Reiley, on Saturday after her plane crashed into Lake Winnebago minutes after takeoff during the AirVenture Oshkosh airshow.
“It’s been tough, but we’re a family of faith of Jesus Christ and we know Devyn is absent of body present but with the Lord,” Collie said Wednesday, according to WBAY.com.
“And I tell my children it’s like she’s gone to a trip to Mars or something and she’s just changed locations, and we’re going to meet her at that same location and that’s the promise we have through Jesus Christ and the resurrection.”
Reiley, 30, was the eldest of the former NFL offensive lineman’s 13 children and became a certified pilot in 2017.
“Devyn was the first one of my children to really take to aviation and it started, I’ve got photos of her at 6 years old flying an airplane,” Collie said. “So from day one, she was into aviation.”
Reiley was flying a World War II-era T-6 Texan with her co-pilot Zach Colliemoreno, 20, when the accident occurred at the Wisconsin event.
The vintage aircraft reportedly reached 3,900 feet before plunging into the lake, where it was spinning out of control before crashing.
The U.S. Coast Guard recovered both the pilots’ bodies Saturday evening after beginning its search that afternoon.
An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the crash.
“She was very much tested, qualified in it, we don’t know what happened. Obviously, the NTSB is going to come out with something three years, two years, three years but it’s really irrelevant,” Collie said.
“She died living life. She died living what she wanted to do.”
Later that day, two other pilots were killed at the same airshow when a helicopter crashed into a gyrocopter.
Collie, who won two Super Bowls with the 49ers in 1989 and 1990, said there will be a service at the airport in San Marcos, Texas, on Saturday to honor Reiley’s memory.