Pair who died in Yosemite enjoyed adventure
SAN FRANCISCO—She was a self-described “adrenaline junkie,” and he took “wow-worthy photos” of the couple posing at the edge of cliffs and jumping from planes that appeared on social media and a travel blog that attracted thousands of followers.
In one post at the Grand Canyon this spring, 30-year-old Meenakshi Moorthy even warned daredevils who try to snap selfies from dangerous heights: “Did you know that wind gusts can be FATAL???” The caption accompanies a photo of Moorthy sitting on the edge of the canyon’s North Rim.
The couple’s latest trip turned out to be their last. Moorthy and her husband, Vishnu Viswanath, 29, who were Indian expats living in California, fell to their deaths in Yosemite National Park last week while taking a selfie, the man’s brother said Tuesday.
They set up their tripod near a ledge at a scenic overlook in the California park, Viswanath’s brother, Jishnu Viswanath, told The Associated Press. Visitors saw the camera the next morning and alerted park rangers, who “used high-powered binoculars to find them and used helicopters to airlift the bodies,” he said.
Rangers found their bodies about 800 feet (245 meters) below Taft Point, where visitors can walk to the edge of a vertigo-inducing granite ledge that offers spectacular views of the Yosemite Valley below.
Their thrill-seeking social media posts foreshadow the couple’s link to the growing problem of selfie deaths.
A study published this month in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care said 259 people had died taking selfies between October 2011 and November 2017.
The report, based on findings from researchers in India who scoured worldwide media reports, said the main causes of selfie deaths were drowning, usually involving people being washed away by waves or falling from a boat, followed by people killed while posing in front of a moving train, deaths involving falls from high places or while taking pictures with dangerous animals.
More than 10 people have died at Yosemite this year, some from natural causes and others from falls, park spokesman Scott Gediman said.
Moorthy and Viswanath were born in India and had lived in the United States for a few years, most recently in the San Francisco Bay Area. Cisco India said Viswanath was a software engineer at the company’s San Jose, California, headquarters in Silicon Valley.
They graduated in 2010 from the College of Engineering, Chengannur, in the Alapuzha district of India’s Kerala state, one of their professors, Nisha Kuruvilla, told AP. She said Moorthy and Viswanath were both good students who were fond of traveling and had married at a Hindu temple in Kerala in southern India four years ago.