Brazil Rope Jump Death Investigated After Instructor Forgot to Clip Rope

Brazilian media released the first images from the investigation into three extreme-sports instructors accused of killing 21-year-old Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas during a rope jump at the Ponte do Esqueleto, or “Skeleton Bridge,” in São Paulo state. The bridge, abandoned for about 30 years, has recently become a popular but unregulated site for extreme sports. In the video, the instructors throw Freitas from a height of 35 meters while she is wearing a helmet and harness, but she is not attached to the rope that should have stopped her fall. She hit the ground and died, and was buried on Sunday.

The disturbing footage, showing her being dropped in the “airplane” pose she requested, spread widely online and triggered reports that the instructors tried to flee or destroy evidence, though those reports have not been verified. All three were later arrested and are now facing manslaughter charges. In questioning, 32-year-old Luis Felipe Feliciano Agoroff said he and 42-year-old Maicon Fernandes Cintra were responsible for tying the rope, though the task was not fixed and sometimes one did it while the other did not.

Agoroff said, “It was either him or me doing it,” but repeatedly claimed he could not remember what happened. He added, “I went to the front first, and then it was erased from my head. I can’t remember,” and said he could not understand how nobody noticed the missing rope even though it was visible on the ground. A third instructor, 27-year-old Vitor de Freitas Gonçalves, said he bore no responsibility and had only been called to help lift her before the throw.

Police said the operation was not really a company but an independent team with no supervision, and that it had been running for about a year. They charged 35.4 dollars per jump and another 21.6 dollars for GoPro footage. On the day of the fatal jump, they were due to complete about 100 jumps and earn around 2,950 dollars. Freitas paid the higher price for the GoPro recording, and investigators are now trying to find the camera, which may have captured her final moments. Police chief Andrea Dantes Levy said it is likely the camera slipped from Freitas’s hand during the fall, even though it was attached to her, but nobody has explained where it is. One detainee, when asked about the GoPro, answered, “We don’t know.”