A young woman died in Brazil after being launched off a bridge for a rope jump without a safety cord, police said Sunday.
The 21-year-old woman, who aspired to become a physical education teacher, had asked to be launched from the bridge airplane style, with two instructors hoisting her above their shoulders as she spread out her arms, the Associated Press reported.
In videos of the Saturday accident circulating online, two men hoist the woman above their heads and launch her off Skeleton Bridge, in the interior of Sao Paulo state, while onlookers realize there is no safety mechanism attached and shout “Guys, the cord!”
“The safety equipment was not properly secured at the time of the jump. The victim did not survive the fall,” police said in a statement to AFP.
Police investigator Andrea Levy told journalists Monday that three instructors have been arrested and could face manslaughter charges.
“They do not remember whether they forgot to attach (the ropes), or who was supposed to do it, or who failed to check. But the fact is the ropes were not attached to her,” Levy said.
Local media identified the victim as Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas, and said she fell around 40 meters (131 feet) to her death. She was buried Sunday in Sao Paulo.
Shortly before the accident, de Freitas posted an image of the site on Instagram captioned: “Who was the crazy person who let me come jump off a bridge???”
Previous videos of the extreme sport at the bridge, carried out by the Entre Cordas company, show participants with a thick safety cord around their waists as they are launched off.
“It was a team there that wasn’t regulated; they didn’t even have authorization to be there,” Delegate Andrea Dantas Levy told local outlet G1.
The video of Rodrigues de Freitas falling to her death has gone viral on social media platforms, where internet users are describing her death as a surreal case of negligence.
Rope jumping differs from bungee jumping in that it uses a less elastic cord, meaning participants swing back and forth rather than bouncing at the end of the jump.
American Dan Osman, considered the inventor of the sport, died rope jumping in 1998 at the age of 35.
In 2013, a Utah man was killed trying to rope swing through the opening of a 110-foot-tall sandstone arch.
