Dark past of bungee jumping team who threw girl to her death without rope... as terrifying new videos emerge
Viral video of her last moments shows three men picking her up over their heads and throwing her off the bridge, with the safety rope lying unused at their feet.
By WILL POTTER, US SENIOR NEWS REPORTER and ELIOT FORCE, US NEWS REPORTER
Published: 22:25 BST, 15 June 2026 | Updated: 14:53 BST, 16 June 2026
Before throwing a woman to her death from an abandoned bridge in a horrific botched bungee jump , instructors at a Brazilian company performed reckless stunts and launched children from the same bridge.
Luis Felipe Feliciano Egoroff, 32, one of the men arrested for allegedly throwing Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas, 21, to her death on Saturday, frequently took to social media to share adrenaline-fueled antics from the site in Sao Paolo.
In one jaw-dropping video from 2023, Egoroff was seen holding onto a bungee rope with one hand as a young child clung to his neck, before running off the side of the abandoned Skeleton Bridge.
In other clips, the bungee instructor and other workers were seen barely missing columns and performing risky flips while holding onto bungee cords, displaying an unnerving lack of safety precautions.
The same 130-foot drop is where Egoroff and two other men allegedly threw Rodrigues de Freitas to her death on Saturday, after forgetting to attach the bungee cord to her harness.
Egoroff and two other men - Vitor de Freitas Goncalves, 27, and Maicon Fernandes Cintra, 42 - who worked for bungee company Entre Cordas, are now facing homicide charges for the horror incident.
A viral video of Rodrigues de Freitas's last moments showed the three men picking her up over their heads and throwing her off the bridge, with the safety rope lying unused at their feet.
Two of the instructors then tried to flee the scene when they realized their grave mistake, before they were tracked down by a military helicopter and arrested in a nearby wooded area, according to local media reports.
Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas, 21, was thrown to her death on Saturday
Rodrigues de Freitas died after rope jump operators forgot to attach her harness, causing her to plunge 130 feet
Horrific footage circulating on social media shows the moment Rodrigues de Freitas, 21, was thrown to her death from the Skeleton Bridge in Sao Paolo on Saturday
Egoroff and Cintra appeared dazed in new mugshots when they were taken into custody, as their attorney said the men were confused about who was supposed to attach the bungee cord to Rodrigues de Freitas.
The bungee instructors' attorney told Brazilian news outlet Metropoles that after he spoke with the three men, none of them could tell him who was responsible for securing the rope.
The attorney said that all three had helped Rodrigues de Freitas before her jump, but they were unsure who made the final safety checks before disaster struck.
'I spoke with them, and they were all responsible for the inspection. First, they put on a kind of vest, and then the rope,' the attorney said.
The bungee jumping company has deleted its Instagram page and made its TikTok private in the wake of the controversy.
Matthew Lawrence, a bungee safety consultant and president of Bungee Consultants International, who had no involvement with the incident, told the Daily Mail the fatal error may have stemmed from a lack of proper safety precautions in Brazil, describing it as 'as egregious a mistake as you could ever imagine in anything like that.'
He said a number of high-profile errors in decades past in the US have led to lawsuits that 'got rid of the cowboys' who would make such mistakes, but that is not the case in the South American nation.
'It would be very rare and very unusual if someone died bungee jumping at a professional bungee jumping location in the US,' he said. 'That's not gonna happen.'
Amid mounting questions over how the workers failed to attach the rope, their attorney said they had been organizing bungee jumps for over six years.
Shockingly, Rodrigues de Freitas did not die immediately after plunging more than 100 feet to the ground
Staff member Luis Felipe Feliciano Egoroff preparing to leap off the abandoned bridge with a child in his arms in a previous bungee jump
In one jaw-dropping video from 2023, Egoroff was seen holding onto a bungee rope with one hand as a young child clung to his neck
He said the rope was attached to the bridge, but 'for some reason' they never attached it to Rodrigues de Freitas or checked her harness before flinging her to her death.
Officials said over 20 people were on the bridge at the time, including the victim's horrified boyfriend, who witnessed her final moments.
While the suspect's attorney said they each helped Rodrigues de Freitas before the jump, Sao Paolo police deputy Andrea Dantas Levy said two of the men alleged they had a 'blackout' and could not recall attaching the rope.
'They said they can’t remember where and when the fault occurred, who would have to have put it, and didn’t,' Levy told the O Globo newspaper.
'The third, who held [her] legs, said he was only called in to help with the throw.'
According to reports, Egoroff and Cintra held Rodrigues de Freitas's body for the throw, and Goncalves held her feet.
Shockingly, the woman did not die immediately after plunging more than 100 feet to the ground, the nurse who tried to save her told Brazilian TV.
Rayza Dias, a nurse at the scene, said Rodrigues de Freitas was suffering horrific injuries but had not yet died when she raced to her aid, and said it was difficult to get to her in the rural area.
'I scraped my whole hand because there's a steep slope down there and only one rope for us to climb down,' she told news show Domingo Espetacular on Sunday. 'It was all covered in mud. I kept going down, down, we walked all the way.'
Egoroff, 32, was arrested in connection with Rodrigues de Freitas' death. He frequently took to social media to share adrenaline-fueled antics from Skeleton Bridge in Sao Paolo
Maicon Fernandes Cintra, 42, (left) and Vitor de Freitas Gonçalves, 27, (right) and Egoroff are facing charges of homicide with eventual intent. The charges could see the men jailed for between six and 30 years if convicted
Years before the incident, the instructors performed reckless stunts and launched children from the same bridge
Rodrigues de Freitas (right) was an aspiring physical education teacher. She was buried in Sao Paulo on Sunday
The bungee jump instructors are perp walked after being detained at the weekend
Dias described how the victim was breathing heavily and still had a weak pulse when she tried to give her life-saving care.
