Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas, 21, died on Saturday after falling from the Skeleton Bridge in Limeira, São Paulo, during a bungee-jumping event that witnesses say went wrong before she ever left the bridge. Staff allegedly pushed her off without first attaching a safety rope, and she fell about 130 feet into a ravine.
The death immediately turned into a police case. Six people connected to the event, including five men and one woman, were taken into custody after the fall, while medics pronounced Freitas dead at the scene. A video of the plunge later spread online, with bystanders heard shouting that she did not have a rope tied to her.
People who saw the event told Military Police that workers appeared to have forgotten to fasten her to a safety cord before pushing her over. That account sits uneasily beside what Freitas had posted earlier from the bridge: images of the event, its setup, equipment, and other participants, including a banner for Entre Cordas. Her last public images showed a controlled outing; the reported sequence of the fall suggests something far more basic failed first.
Her fiancé had also been at the event and later received medical treatment after becoming ill when he heard she had died. Some organizers reportedly ran from the scene shortly after she fell, and two of them were later located with the help of a police helicopter. The Civil Police is now investigating and will decide whether the detained suspects will be charged with crimes.
For Freitas, the unanswered question is not whether the jump was fatal. It is how a safety rope could have been missing at the moment the event was supposed to protect her.
