Fatal attractions

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/05/2018 (2701 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It seems guns don’t kill people — selfies do.

Arguably the most disturbing social media trend is the growing number of cellphone users paying the ultimate price while trying to snap the ultimate photo of themselves to post online.

In the most recent case, a 20-year-old Indian student, identified as Ankit, fell to his death earlier this month while posing for selfies at The Gap, the ocean cliff tourist attraction in western Australia.

A witness told reporters Ankit was swept out to sea and his friends had to be stopped from jumping off the cliff to save him.

One of the student’s friends, Sahil Khenchi, said the group was not fully aware of the dangers The Gap posed, and he released a photo of Ankit in his final moments to serve as a warning to others.

“We just can’t explain, he was one of our friends,” he said. “He was a very good man. It was like his hobby to take pictures in each and every moment.”

Tragically, Ankit was far from the first person to lose his life in the never-ending pursuit of the perfect photograph to share on social media, as we can see from today’s alarming — and hopefully behaviour-changing — list of Five Famous Cases of Death by Selfie:

5) The killer scenery: A landmark cliff in Portugal

The ill-fated photo: The rocky cliff edge at Cabo da Roca, the most westerly point in Portugal, is a magnet for tourists eager to photograph themselves “at the edge of Europe.”

Buses loaded with tourists visit the point every day and a large sculpted cross at the point proclaims: “This is the point where the land meets the sea” — the westernmost tip of Europe. In August 2014, the lure of the cliff edge proved irresistible for a young Polish couple, who fell hundreds of feet to their deaths while trying to take a selfie of themselves as their two young children looked on.

The pair, identified as a couple in their 30s who had lived in Portugal for years, were “mad about taking photographs.” It seems the pair crossed a safety barrier to reach the cliff’s edge and slipped while trying to capture the image.

“The family had apparently gone up the path between the lighthouse and the edge of the cliff, and — telling their children, aged five and six, to stay back — the parents had approached the drop down to the ravine to take the kind of shot everyone visiting the landmark likes to take,” noted the Portugal Resident, a local English-language news site.

Newspaper Correio da Manha, the first media outlet to reach the site, said a mobile phone was found at the top of the cliff, “near to the children,” and it had registered three photos of the family at the spot. In the last, all you could see was a “fuzzy blue image.” “I didn’t see the couple fall,” security guard José Gonçalves said.

“But a Spanish couple saw everything. They rushed to the aid of the children and brought them back down… It is the kind of thing they will never forget… These kinds of tragedies happen far too often. People just don’t think.

So often I have seen situations where all it would take is a puff of wind and down would go a group of smiling Japanese… Tourists are so keen to get the perfect photograph, they forget their own safety.”

4) The killer scenery: The skies of Colorado

The ill-fated photo: Here’s a helpful tip for budding pilots — don’t selfie and fly! That is most likely what led to the tragic deaths of a pilot and his passenger when their small plane crashed on May 31, 2014. According to news reports, pilot Amritpal Singh, 29, and an unnamed passenger, a musician in town for a concert, were killed instantly when Singh’s Cessna 150K crashed into a wheat field shortly after midnight.

In a report, the National Transportation Safety Board suggested distraction caused by taking selfies was likely to blame for the crash. It is likely that the use of cellphones during that flight “distracted the pilot,” the report said, causing him to develop spatial disorientation and lose control of the plane, which went into a stall and then spun before crashing.

Safety Board investigators found nothing wrong with the aircraft itself that might have contributed to the crash, CNN reported at the time. But investigators did find an undamaged GoPro video camera near the wreckage and recovered its data card, which showed Singh with several passengers on flights the previous day, and one nighttime flight shortly before the fatal trip, taking photos of himself with his cellphone.

The fatal flight itself was not captured on the footage, but investigators noted the pilot was at the controls of the plane when it stalled and crashed in the wheat field about 50 kilometres east of Denver. Federal rules bar private pilots from dangerous or careless behaviour, but don’t specifically ban the use of phones.

“During the climb-out portion of flight, the pilot uses his cellphone to take a self photograph. The camera’s flash was activated and illuminated the cockpit area,” the NTSB reported about one of Singh’s flights shortly before the crash.

“During the climb-out phase, the pilot was seen making keyboard entries to his cellphone and additional keyboard entries on a portion of flight consistent with the downwind leg.”

3) The killer scenery: Bears, bulls and elephants

The ill-fated photo(s): We’ve all been warned not to feed wildlife, but in the social media universe, it might be wiser to advise people not to take selfies with animals that can bite or stomp you to death. Earlier this month, an Indian man was mauled to death by a bear when he attempted to take a selfie with the creature.

According to news reports, Prabhu Bhatara was on his way home from a wedding when he spotted an injured bear and tried to get a photograph, despite warnings from the other passengers in his SUV. When he sidled up to the animal, the bear lashed out and a struggle ensued.

A stray dog reportedly bit the bear, but that failed to save Bhatara, who, according to a local forest ranger, “died on the spot.” India has recorded the highest rate of selfie-related deaths, with one study noting that of 127 deaths reported between March 2014 and September 2016, 60 per cent (76) occurred in that country.

Last year, at least two Indian men had fatal encounters with elephants while seeking selfies. In December, Jaykrushna Nayak was walking home from the village market when he spotted an elephant being teased by a crowd. When he tried to take a selfie, “the enraged animal wrapped its trunk around him and crushed him to death,” according to the BBC.

In September, security guard Ashok Bharati was captured on video edging closer to an elephant that suddenly charged. Bharati tried to flee, but was overtaken and trampled, and the video went viral. In Spain, meanwhile, onlookers were horrified to see David Gonzalez Lopez, 32, being fatally gored while taking a selfie in August 2015 during the running of the bulls in the village of Villaseca de la Sagra.

Lopez was not a participant, but left a protected area to take a selfie, and while he filmed a collision between two bulls, a third gored him in the back, flinging him in the air. “He looked like a puppet spinning around in the air because he didn’t fall back to the ground,” a witness said.

2) The killer scenery: A 1.5-tonne walrus

The ill-fated photo: Staying away from bears, elephants and rampaging bulls is just common sense. But steering clear of a walrus? Well, a Chinese businessman might be alive today if he had heeded three simple words: beware of walrus.

In May 2016, a man identified as Jia Lijun visited the Xixiakou Wildlife Park in Rongcheng in northeast China, where he apparently slipped into the unguarded walrus enclosure and tried to take a selfie with the massive sea creature.

By all accounts, Lijun was a big fan of the tusked mammal, having previously sent photos and videos to friends and family with the message: “So strong, so big.” According to news reports, as he snapped pictures for his social media account with his back to the walrus, it grabbed him from behind and “playfully dragged him into the water.”

A friend of the man’s, surnamed Wu, said his buddy was excited about meeting the walrus, and had sent him photos and video. “Who would have thought that at three o’clock he would send me a video, talking and laughing, and just a few minutes later he was drowning in the water,” Wu told local reporters.

As Lijun was being swung around in the pool, the animal’s keeper, surnamed Duan, jumped in to attempt a rescue, but was himself dragged under by the huge walrus. Zoo staff believed it was a playful gesture gone wrong, as the keeper had cared for the animal since it arrived at the zoo as a baby more than 10 years earlier.

On China’s social media sites, the zoo was criticized for not having a barrier between the public and the animals. “This is the root cause of the tragedy,” Wu said. “In the viewing area, people and the walrus can come into close contact.”

1) The killer scenery: Live Russian hand grenades

The ill-fated photo(s): In 2015, Russia’s Interior Ministry launched a leaflet, video and web campaign aimed at getting citizens to exercise greater care when taking selfies. “A cool selfie could cost you your life,” the ministry warned in a new leaflet packed with tips such as “a selfie with a weapon kills.”

The campaign featured unintentionally hilarious road sign-style images warning Russians not to take self-portraits with guns or pose alone in front of a lion or a speeding train.

The push came after a string of highly hazardous selfie poses sent around 100 people to hospital, and resulted in more than a few highly publicized deaths. “Unfortunately, we have noted recently that the number of accidents caused by lovers of self-photography is constantly increasing,” Yelena Alexeyeva, an aide to the interior minister, told the media.

One of the most bizarre cases was reported in January 2015, when two young soldiers blew themselves to smithereens in the Urals while taking a selfie holding a hand grenade with the pin pulled out. Only the cellphone with the selfie survived. You’d think people would learn from that, but in 2017, another young Russian man with more ego than brains died after pulling the pin on a hand grenade and posting photographs of himself holding it.

According to Britain’s Independent newspaper, police said Alexander (Sasha) Chechik was killed instantly in the incident in the city of Labinsk in southwest Russia. The selfie seeker had sent a text with a photo of the grenade to a friend. The friend advised Chechik not to “f— around” but received no response.

“Apparently the guy did not manage to insert the (pin) back in,” a source told Interfax. Police ruled the incident an accident, because the selfie buff believed the grenade would not explode as long as he didn’t throw it. That should definitely be in the guidelines.

In conclusion, for the near future, we suggest everyone leave their cellphones behind the next time they go on vacation. Enjoy the scenery without technology, because taking a selfie might just be the last thing you do.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca