Three men threw Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas off a 130-foot bridge without a safety rope and watched her die.
When Brazilian police arrested them and demanded answers, the three instructors gave a response that is now spreading across the internet.
None of them remember who forgot to attach the rope.
What Witnesses Saw on Skeleton Bridge
Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas paid extra for the GoPro package.
She wanted footage of her jump at Ponte do Esqueleto – the abandoned "Skeleton Bridge" in Limeira, São Paulo – to share with friends and family.
She asked to be launched airplane style, arms outstretched, as three instructors hoisted her toward the edge.
Someone in the crowd spotted the rope still coiled on the platform.
They screamed in Portuguese – "A corda, gente!" – "Guys, the cord!"
The instructors launched her anyway.
She fell into the ravine below and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Her fiancé collapsed in shock and was taken to a nearby hospital.
Hours before the jump, she had posted to Instagram from the bridge.
The caption read: "Who was the crazy person who let me come jump off a bridge?"
Three Men Who Don't Remember Anything
Police investigator Andrea Dantas Levy laid out what the interrogations produced.
"They do not remember whether they forgot to attach the ropes, or who was supposed to do it, or who failed to check," Levy told reporters.
Not one of three men – who had been running jumps at this bridge for about a year – could explain how a 21-year-old ended up in the ravine without a cord.
Luis Felipe Feliciano Egoroff, 32, Vitor de Freitas Goncalves, 27, and Maicon Fernandes Cintra, 42, were charged with homicide with "dolus eventualis" – meaning they were knowingly aware of the risk of death and proceeded anyway.
Two of them fled into the woods immediately after Maria hit the ground.
Police tracked them down using a helicopter.
A witness waiting in line for his own jump, Rafael Goulard, watched one of the instructors walk down to her body and strip the GoPro camera from around her neck before police arrived.
Entre Cordas scrubbed its Instagram account from the internet while paying customers were still on the bridge.
A WhatsApp group used to coordinate the operation disappeared within minutes.
The group operated with no license, no permits, and no registered business entity of any kind.
They charged $35 per jump and an extra $22 for GoPro footage – and on the day Maria died, they were planning to run about 100 jumps for roughly $2,950 in cash.
An Expert Who Saw the Red Flags Immediately
American bungee operator Chris Batten – more than 30 years in the business – watched the video and said the breakdown was visible long before Maria left the platform.
Every legitimate operation runs on a single chain of command: one person in charge, one backup verifying, every time, for every jumper.
"If there's not one person taking charge and then another person acting as backup, that's a clear red flag," Batten said.
In the United States, a jumper between 100 and 150 pounds goes off on a minimum of three cords.
In the video of Maria's jump, only one or two cords are visible on the ground.
The Limeira city government had sent repeated letters to Brazil's federal government asking for inspections and barriers at Skeleton Bridge.
They never got a response.
Now the city is pursuing the federal government in court over an abandoned piece of federal property that spent years as an unregulated jump site.
American Dan Osman – widely credited as the inventor of rope jumping – died doing this in 1998.
Entre Cordas knew the history, knew the stakes, ran a cash operation on a 30-year-old derelict bridge, skipped the backup cords, skipped the safety check, and when a young woman died because of it, none of them could say whose job it was to look.
Sources:
- Fox Weather, "21-year-old, Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas, was participating in a guided rope-jumping excursion," Fox Weather, June 15, 2026.
- ABC News, "Brazilian police say woman who rope jumped to her death was not tied by instructors," ABC News, June 16, 2026.
- Matt Vespa, "This Brazilian Bridge Jump Disaster Keeps Getting Worse," Townhall, June 18, 2026.
- CBS News, "Woman dies after being thrown from bridge without safety cord in Brazil," CBS News, June 15, 2026.
- NBC News, "Three instructors charged in bridge-jumping death of woman not secured to rope," NBC News, June 16, 2026.
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