Brazil bungee tragedy: Staff 'forgot to attach rope' before woman, 21, plunged to death

A 21-year-old woman plunged to her death from a bridge in Brazil after staff allegedly threw her over the edge without attaching her bungee rope.

Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas was killed in front of horrified witnesses at the Ponte do Esqueleto, an abandoned railway bridge in Limeira, São Paulo. Workers launched her from a 40-metre drop in a “Superman” pose.

Footage of the moments before the fall shows two members of staff carrying her horizontally by her arms and legs towards the edge. They were apparently unaware that her harness hadn't been connected to the main rope. As she was released, voices can be heard shouting: “The rope, people, the rope.”

The camera then pans to show the safety line still lying on the platform as Ms Rodrigues de Freitas falls to the ground below. Firefighters and paramedics were called, but she was pronounced dead at the scene from multiple injuries.

Witnesses told military police that employees had forgotten to connect the safety equipment before the jump. Six people were taken to Limeira’s 2nd Police District, with three men reportedly arrested at the scene. Brazilian media said two people tried to flee into nearby woodland after the fall but were captured with the help of a police helicopter.

The jump appeared to involve Entre Cordas, the bungee rope-jump operator, and Ih Voei, a linked instructor brand. Brazilian reports said staff at the scene were wearing shirts bearing the names of both brands. Neither had issued a public statement by Saturday night, while Entre Cordas’s Instagram page, which had advertised “a jump to the extraordinary”, was reportedly taken down after the tragedy.

Ms Rodrigues de Freitas, from Jandira, had posted excitedly about the trip only hours earlier, sharing pictures of the venue, her identification bracelets and the operators. “Who was the crazy person who let me jump off a bridge?” she wrote beside a photograph of an Entre Cordas banner.

Limeira city hall said it would sue Brazil’s federal government, claiming it had warned for months about dangerous access to the bridge, which it said was under federal responsibility. Police are investigating whether negligence led to Ms Rodrigues de Freitas’s death.

“Who was the crazy person who let me jump off a bridge?” — Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas, hours before her death.