Instructor ‘drinking beer’ before bungee death of woman, 23
A BRITISH woman who was killed bungee jumping in Spain did not have safety wires secured properly and was under the supervision of an inexperienced instructor who had been drinking beer, it has been alleged.
Kleyo De Abreu, 23, from London, died instantly after colliding with an old stone bridge in Lanjaron, Granada.
Sources claimed the instructor encouraged the group to drink beer after they ran out of water.
Miss De Abreu was being watched by her aunt as she swung into the ancient crossing above the River Tablate on her second jump of the day on Tuesday. She was left dangling for 25 minutes as rescuers were called to the scene and was pronounced dead after she was freed from the bungee cords.
Miss De Abreu is understood to have signed up for an afternoon of “puenting” in which bungee jumpers swing after the initial fall rather than bouncing back up.
Sources claimed she leapt before all three safety lines had been secured.
An instructor, who works in the area, said: “The guide was not very experienced and had been working for only two months.
“It was 35 degrees [Celsius] and they were all on top of the bridge. He ran out of bottles of water and told everyone he could sell them beers instead. So he started drinking beer with people from the group.”
It was claimed the guide was attaching one of the safety wires when Miss De Abreu jumped.
The source added: “She was ready and he walked across to the other end to check the rope was fastened safely, but she jumped anyway. This was a tragic communication error.”
A spokesman for the Guardia Civil in Granada said: “Though it is too early to draw any conclusions about the circumstances, one of the lines of inquiry is that there was a miscalculation with the rope.”
The bridge runs below a modern, metallic crossing and is used by several adventure sports firms. Thrill-seek- ers usually fall for about 65ft and swing underneath the stone bridge, paying about £24 per jump. A local website describes the bungee jump as a “hair-raising” experience because of the closeness of the ravine walls during the fall.
Miss De Abreu was born in London but her parents separated when she was very young and she went with her mother to her native South Africa.
She was raised in Cape Town but, after graduating from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, she returned to the UK to learn more about her British heritage and in March settled in Brixton, south London.
She had been reunited only recently with her British father, Bernard Atwell, whom she had not seen for 23 years.
Mr Atwell, a singer who uses the stage name Rev. Be. Atwell, told the BBC: “My daughter is gone and nothing is going to bring her back, but I have spoken to the family and we are all on the same page. We don’t want something like this to happen again.” He described her as “sweet, caring, bubbly and focused”. A relation told The Daily Tel
egraph that Miss De Abreu had gone travelling around Europe with her boyfriend and that she was staying with an aunt and cousins in Spain when the tragedy occurred.
An investigating judge in Spain has launched an inquiry and the Foreign Office was “urgently looking into reports of the death”.