A photographer plunged to his death after falling from Spain’s tallest bridge while trying to film a video.
British content creator and photographer Lewis Stevenson died after falling from Castilla La Mancha bridge in Talavera de la Reina, Spain on October 13, according to the BBC.
The 26-year-old fell to his death while filming a video as he was attempting to scale the 630-foot-tall Castilla-La Mancha Bridge. Stevenson was filming content for his social media account.
Stevenson was accompanied by another 24-year-old British man as he attempted to climb the Castilla-La Mancha Bridge in the early hours of the morning, according to a press release published by Macarena Muñoz, Talavera de la Reina’s Councillor for Citizen Security.
However, Stevenson reportedly fell from the bridge at around 7:14 a.m. and died. Stevenson’s body was removed from the scene and taken to a nearby funeral home by a coroner.
“As we have been able to find out, they had come to Talavera to climb the bridge and create content for social networks, which has resulted in this unfortunate and sad outcome,” Muñoz says in a statement.
The cable-stayed bridge, which opened in 2011, is the tallest in Spain and one of the tallest in Europe.
Muñoz says that climbing the bridge is strictly prohibited and city officials have reiterated on many occasions that it “cannot be done under any circumstances.”
Nonetheless, local media outlets report that the Castilla-La Mancha Bridge has long drawn content creators who scale it despite the ban.
Spanish media outlets have suggested that the Castilla-La Mancha Bridge was likely slippery following rain in the region but these reports have not been confirmed.
In a statement to the BBC, Stevenson’s mother paid tribute to her son. She described him as a “thrill-seeker” who had a passion for photography — rather than a content creator.
“He was a thrill-seeker who loved to travel and have new experiences,” his mother Keilia Stevenson says.
“We as a whole family supported his adventures around the world, which included amazing places he got to visit like Easter Island and Machu Picchu, but unfortunately those adventures also included climbing great heights which we didn’t particularly agree with but understood this was what he loved to do.
“He knew his limits and never did anything beyond them. He was a keen photographer and he did this all for passion, not as an influencer.”
Image credits: Header photo via Facebook (left) and Wikimedia Commons (right).