Twenty-one-year-old model Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas died when she fell from a 40-meter-high bridge in Brazil after staff failed to attach a bungee cord to her harness. The tragedy happened on the Ponte do Esqueleto bridge in Limeira, in the state of São Paulo, and the girl posted excited messages on social networks just before the jump, it is written Unilad.
A horrifying video that has gone viral shows the moment three instructors lift the girl, who is standing with her arms outstretched, and throw her off the edge of a bridge. As he falls, horrified witnesses begin shouting in Portuguese. “Rope, people, rope!”, they shouted. The bungee cord, however, was not attached to her, but remained lying on the bridge.
Just a few minutes before the fatal fall, the girl shared photos of jump bracelets on her Instagram profile. “Who is that madman who persuaded me to jump off the bridge?”, she wrote jokingly in one of the posts.
Six people were arrested
Emergency services were called to the scene, but unfortunately, they could only pronounce Maria Eduarde Rodrigues de Freitas dead. Her body was transported to the Institute of Forensic Medicine, and local authorities launched an investigation to determine whether there are grounds for filing criminal charges.
Local media reports that six people were arrested at the scene, two of whom tried to escape after the accident. Police are investigating whether negligence contributed to the tragedy. According to reports from CNN Brasil, the Instagram profile of the firm that organized the jumps has since been deleted, as has the WhatsApp group through which information about the event was shared.
The tragedy also raised questions about public access to the bridge itself, leading to a dispute between Limeira city authorities and Brazil’s federal government. Limeira City Hall has announced a lawsuit against the federal government for allowing public access to the dangerous bridge. She claims that the bridge is under federal jurisdiction and that she has been warning for months about the risk that free access represents, writes Index.hr.
(TIP/Photo: Instagram)
