'Skeleton Bridge' Fatal Rope Jump Takes Shocking Turn — Everything We Know

It's the shocking video that's become infamous worldwide. A young woman seemingly thrown from a skeleton bridge plummeting to her death. There is no rope attached to that person. That is very, very evident in the video. Now, three people are charged with her murder and the federal government faces a civil lawsuit. In my personal point of view, everybody involved is responsible for this. Here's everything we know about the rope jumping tragedy. This is Scandal, presented by Lawn Cron. I'm Sierra Gillespie. This is one of those stories that's really hard to tackle on so many levels. Mainly, because it was so preventable. And yet, Maria Eduardo Rodriguez de Fritas, a 21-year-old woman in the prime of her life, was literally thrown off a skeleton bridge in Brazil, falling 130 feet to the rocky riverbed below. And there are so many things to unpack in the story from the lack of regulations and rope jumping to the murder charges that three people now face. There's also the mystery of the camera. Maria was allegedly wearing at the time of her fall. And whether there was alleged tampering with evidence, as it is yet to be found. On today's episode of Scandal, we're taking a closer look at all of the information we have right now from the moments before the ill-fated rope jump to present day. Everyone involved, the complete timeline, and what to expect ahead. Today's Scandal takes us to Lameira, Brazil, a city about 90 miles north of San Paulo. Limeira is home to what's known as the Ponchi du Esqueleto, which translates to the skeleton bridge. Years ago, this bridge was built as a part of a real-way expansion, but it was never completed. So it sat there for decades as nature overtook the area, leaving behind a chilling landscape with an ominous name. What's more, the area has become really popular in recent years for rope jumping. People come from literally hundreds of miles away to jump off this bridge. It's kind of become an underground right of passage for people in the rope jumping world. Here's Brazilian attorney, Andrea Lee Barka. When it comes to the bridge itself, the bridge was built to be path for a train line. That was a national train line that actually never crossed that bridge. The train never never came. So that bridge was useless for many, many years. And these activities were happening here for many, many years. And nothing was done to stop this. They put signs up in one side, but the people were coming in through private properties that were close to the bridge. So they didn't even see a sign. They just knew that there was a bridge and they had to get there somehow. The bridge itself belongs to the federal government, but the city halls from the two towns involved also share responsibility of this. They had to, with signs, they had to make sure that they prevent people from accessing this bridge, because it has been known that this was a dangerous place for many, many years. After this all happened, the federal government is compromised to implore the bridge. They're going to demolish it. And the city's involved is going to put access to prevent people from accessing this bridge from either sides, while that doesn't happen. But this happened now. This should have happened a long time before. And it also is fine of all that. No jumping is not exactly a new activity. It didn't begin to happen yesterday. So if it wasn't going to be absolutely prohibited, they shouldn't have been regulated a long time ago. This will be a continuous theme in this case, the lack of safety protocol. There's even a lawsuit now filed against the Brazilian federal government for lack of regulation regarding rope jumping and the sparing safety procedures in place. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before we get into any lawsuit or criminal charges filed, we must first discuss the victim in this case. It's 21-year-old Maria Eduardo Rodriguez de Fritas. According to friends and family, Maria was vivacious and full of life. She's remembered as being energetic, adventurous, and a lover of both nature and outdoor sports. It's no surprise that Maria was constantly staying active. At the time of her death, she was actually a student studying physical education and sports management, according to the Straits Times. Maria lives with her family in Genjiro, just outside of San Paolo, and worked at Pano Bianco Academia, a physical fitness center. After Maria's death, her team released a statement, reading quote, "Today we said goodbye to a very special person, to our Peno Bianco Silverstone family. Maria Eduardo left her mark through the dedication, affection, joy, and respect with what she treated everyone around her. Your presence illuminated the environment and your memory will remain forever in our hearts. In this moment of deep sorrow, we join together in prayer and solidarity with family, friends, and colleagues, wishing strength and comfort to face this loss." May the good memories, shared moments, and the love left by her be a source of peace and comfort. Rest in peace, Maria Eduardo. Maria's mom also released a heartbreaking statement it reads, "My beloved daughter, today alone, I wanted to hug you more than a thousand times. How much her departure hurts me. I love you eternally, my princess, and thank you so much for being a part of my life for these 21 years. One in honor it was to hear you call me mom. God, thank you for this privilege." And that leads us to the tragic day of Maria's death, Saturday June 13th. Maria and her partner traveled to the skeleton bridge with the express goal of rope jumping. Since the story broke, there's been a lot of discussion about rope jumping and the confusion about its relationship to bungee jumping. But according to bungee jumping expert Matt Lawrence, there are some major differences. And for the untrained eye, this could look very much like a bungee jump, but it's not. There's no bungee cords there here in this activity. The dissipation of the potential energy, let's call it, is done through air drag, the pendulum swinging motion. Whereas in bungee jumping, that is done through the dissipation of energy through the up and down rebounding that the rubber stores in the court. So you're bouncing up and down, slowly getting the oscillations getting smaller and smaller and that's how that energy is dissipated. So it's, although they look quite similar in terms of, you know, so much jumping off its structure, they are quite different and they are treated differently with regulations. According to experts, rope jumping shouldn't be any more dangerous than bungee jumping, but oftentimes it is. "My understanding is that rope jumping being a fairly new activity is not highly regulated. I have no knowledge of any safety standards that exist out there for that. There are many safety standards for bungee jumping, depending on what jurisdiction you are in, you will be using one or the other, but in terms of rope jumps, no safety standards exist. So that is really the main problem." According to Matt, the barrier to entry and bungee jumping is really high. There are a lot of protocols and procedures that need to be followed. But in the case of rope jumping, especially in this underground world and in precarious places like the skeleton bridge, a lot of necessary regulations just don't exist. Like, for example, a second set of eyes, or even something as basic as a safety to-do list. "What's required when you're right aside, side operations, man, is a series of checklists that everybody has to go through as they're performing a hook-ups. And so it's like before that person gets to the edge, there's 10 things that have to happen." Okay, first of all, let's check the harnesses. Double check the harnesses. Second, pick up the rope, connect it to the thing. That gets double checked as well. And before that, they can even get a detached from their safety line, which, you know, there should be a safety line on that person until they are connected to the whole entire rigging system. So all those things have to happen. Harness checks, connection checks, anchor checks, before anybody can even just proceed to the point where they can even get into a position to jump. And then once they get into that position, there's all another series of checks that have to happen. Okay, put your feet to the edge, you know, get to this point. Get to that point. I'm going to count to three. You're going to do this. You're going to do that. And if those aren't occurring properly, you need to pull back and start over. In the case of Maria, that's allegedly not what happened. And I say that based on several things, including witness testimony, Igor Deans was there at the time. And Maria's jump and told Brazilian news outlet G one quote, the moment it all happened, you could hear the people in the back asking, where's the rope? She's without a rope. The operators didn't know what to say. Everyone who was there panicked and they had no answers. Another instructor, whose name has not been released, gave a statement to the civil police. According to UOL Notisaz, they said, quote, "What I heard was, my god, the girl helped the girl because it's normal for the person to scream when they jump and for the crowd around to scream with them. I heard screams and when I turned around, it had already happened." There's not just eyewitness testimony either. In fact, there's actual video of Maria's fall. We stopped the video mid-air so you You don't see the horror of what happens next. But Maria plummets the equivalent of 13 stories to the ground as men literally toss her off the side of a bridge. And the position Maria was in is worth noting. This was a Superman-type pose, where the workers would carry the person above their heads and then toss them into the air as the jumper stretches out their arms like Superman. Just about a month before Maria's jump, social media influencer Estefani Gonzales made a post showing she was on the same skeleton bridge doing that same jump with the same people who helped Maria. Estefani made a series of videos after Maria's death explaining what her experience was. She says the organizers told her and others never to distract the rope operators, and that multiple safety checks were done before the jump. About Maria's experience, she said, "I don't really know what happened." We do, however, know what happened. According to video and witness testimony, Maria was thrown off the skeleton bridge without a rope. People in the background of videos can reportedly be heard screaming, "The rope, people, the rope," or "Guys, the rope." I know. It's very hard to believe that this would happen the way that at the same time you get. I panicked when I saw the video because I was like, "You can see this was not secure. The stop, people scream, people shout at it, she doesn't have a rope, stop," and they didn't hear. Probably because they're accustomed to always hearing people shouting when they're doing this and they can't get distracted or they'll hurt the person. But at the same time, it's hard to believe that something like this would happen. And here's the thing, according to experts like Andrioli, rope jumping is very common in Brazil, but at times it can be very illegal. And they didn't even have a formal company for this. They would have possibly been charged if they were caught doing this because not only they didn't have a company, they didn't have authorization, but the place where this happened was a scenario of prior accidents at this. So they wouldn't even get that authorization whatsoever. What's more, minutes before Maria's deadly fall, she made a now cryptic post to social media writing, "Who was the crazy person who let me jump off of rich?" Well, the answer to that is allegedly six people. Three have been arrested, but not charged, so their names haven't been released, but three more have been charged. They include 27-year-old Vitor G. Freitas González, 32-year-old Luis Felipe Feliciano E. Garof, and 42-year-old Maicon Fernánchez Sinatra. According to NBC News, all three men were jumping instructors the day Maria fell. They later reportedly told investigators that Maria wasn't hooked up to any robes, but said they didn't remember whose job it was to double check her safety equipment. Since Maria's death, all three of those men have been charged with murder. They're being charged with homicide. This case brings up a very old debate about intent or blame, which is what we call "dolo" or "hola." They're being initially charged with homicide, with the intention to kill somebody, which is omistigio de los. When it comes to a case of homicide where there is no blame with this negligence with what you call "hola" or "hola" or "hola." When we talk about the negligence, the duty to protect but the absence of protection, those cases, they are not punishable by prison. You don't get imprisoned because of this type of crime, so when you don't get imprisoned for some type of crime, you can't be in preventive detention. That's what's going on right now. There are three people in preventive detention because of this crime. In order to get that preventive detention, they have to charge them initially with omistigio de los. According to experts like Andrioli, it's actually kind of odd that these three men were charged with murder. So here's what's going on. This case has brought a lot of media attention to it, and when this happens, sometimes these cases are dealt with in a different way that they would be dealt in other cases. For example, we have many other cases, similar cases of accidents with sports, and those are always dealt with as non-intentional, as negligence, as inpedicia. In this case, because of the media attention, it's been dealt with like it was intentional for them to kill these people, which as a lawyer, personally, I don't think those apply. And we'll dive deeper into all of this in a minute, but we also have to discuss what happened after Maria's fall. Now we already showed you the heroing video of her free falling mid-air plummeting 13 stories to the rocky ground below, but somehow, miraculously, Maria initially survived the fall. And also, miraculously on the scene was off duty nurse 26-year-old Reza Diaz. Reza was next in line to jump when Maria fell to the ground, so she rushed to Maria's side where she found her breathing heavily with a very weak pulse. Reza told the news outlet Brute, she comforted Maria, saying, quote, "I even talked to her. I have a habit of joking," and saying, "Nobody dies on my shift," and I told her, "Dudah, nobody dies on my shifts, even though I wasn't on my shifts there." Even with Reza's heroic efforts, it was too late. Emergency responders arrived on the scene at about 9.55 a.m., at which point Maria was pronounced dead. According to multiple reports, the trauma to Maria's body was so severe she wasn't even taken to the hospital for treatment. Instead, she was pronounced dead on the scene and taken directly to the Institute of Legal Medicine for an autopsy. But Reza's heroic efforts didn't end with her attempting to help Maria. She also gave investigators an important clue following Maria's jump. According to Reza, everyone who rented a GoPro that day was given a yellow wristband. She noticed Maria had a wristband, meaning she was reportedly wearing a camera at the time of her jump. However, investigators still have yet to find the camera, meaning it's either missing or was purposely removed from Maria's body after the fall. According to the New York Post, investigators released a statement about the camera saying, "The civil police are continuing their investigations to fully clarify the dynamics of the events, identify all criminal responsibilities, and locate the camera used by the victim at the time of the jump, considered an important element for reconstructing what happened." Because the camera was with the victim the whole time, and the camera is going to show if she noticed that she had a rope, she has to stop if she was aware if they were aware that she had a rope. But the way the camera went missing is still up for debate, though some witnesses say they allegedly saw it being removed from Maria's body. The accusation is that they were part of the team that was making sure that this road of being was happening, one of the people that were arrested is the one that was at the bottom of the bridge, which is accused of hiding the camera, which wasn't found yet. But a witness says that they saw him pick up the camera from the body. That's another point. The allegation that one of the suspects stole the camera or tampered with evidence. There's also reports that they fled the scene after Maria fell to her death. But experts say it may not be the traditional consciousness of guilt. "I understand that, of course, they knew what happened was a crime. But I don't think that the fact that they ran away means they were guilty of something or that they planned, because they didn't do it and run away rightly as it was planned. It just ran away. They were in chalk." Trialies says the suspects have been charged with murder, not necessarily because it's the correct charge for the alleged crime, but almost as a way to hold them. From here, the investigation continues for a total of 45 days with a possible extension for another 45. But when it's complete, they could simply be released. That's possible, but so too is a potential trial. I imagine that the defendant is going to argue that this is a case of Copa, this is a case of homicidio Copa also. And why is that? There's a line in criminal doctrine, which is, we have doled women throughout in Copa, Conceitio, which is, in one side, you have the intent, but it's not exactly the fear. You know that there is a risk and you don't care that somebody might die because of that. And in Copa, Conceitio, you have a situation where you know there's a risk, but you hope that is not going to happen. In your conscience, you're clear that you're trying your best to not let that happen. And here's the catch. This is very difficult to prove in court. So when you have any type of doubt. The court has to rule in favor of the defendant. This is why I believe this is going to fall as Armasijo Poposo because this going to be very hard to prove intent in this case. Even though there is a lot of negligence in there, where a lot of things that happen in order for this accident to take place, where there should be more responsibility, the government should have blocked the bridge, the police should have been seeing what is going on. If they know that there's always the risk of this accident that people go there to jump, there should be some kind of security there, the people that wanted to make this jump, they should have at least ordered an authorization, they should have a legal company at least and they didn't. And every other thing that happened to make this possible, to make this horrible accident possible. But in court, which is what is going to be analyzed actually is only the facts in that day that led to that accident. So you have federal authorities and state authorities and the police that are going to answer this and administratively, administratively, they're going to enter this in their own companies. But as to the death itself, it's going to fall only on the people that were there at the moment, that were carrying her, that should have secured her. And for those people, it's going to be very hard to prove that they had the intent of killing her. We'll talk about that more during our interview, but the idea of proving intent here is pretty tricky. This isn't a normal murder case that we cover on the scandal. Sure, it's possible that there was negligence, but does that mean there was intentional premeditated murder? The theory is not that they were so reckless that they didn't mind, but they didn't care if she lived or died. That's going to be a hard thing to prove because the state might so far say that they really didn't know she didn't have a role. It's going to be an uphill battle for prosecutors at the very least as the burden of proof is really high, which again, we'll talk about during our interview, but a lesser burden of proof of course comes in civil court. And that's relevant in this case too because local cities have filed suit against the federal government following Maria's death. The municipality of Limeira has filed suit against the federal government, alleging it is responsible for Maria's death for lack of jurisdiction in this really high-risk area. Limeira argues that the government has repeatedly ignored warning signs about the skeleton bridge and actually enabled unregulated rope jumping companies to use this bridge as a location for illegal activity. I think it is a strong lawsuit because the bridge is actually the responsibility of the federal government so they should have secured the bridge. But they weren't the only ones who were responsible for it. Any authority that is related to the security of the city could have done this, not only the federal government, they should have all done it. When it comes to discussing responsibility, I think it's very clear that it falls on the federal government in its case. There's already reports that the bridge will be torn down following Maria's death. Andrealli reports if the federal government is found liable in this civil case, they'll likely have to face a hefty fine. A councilwoman told G1 about all this, quote, the federal government authorized it. The mayor provided the equipment and now the bridge will be demolished. The important thing is that lives will not be lost here. According to New York Post, the office of the Secretary of Public Security of Sound Paolo also said, quote, "I've seen many deaths, crimes, criminals. I practice extreme sports. I have never seen such a disgusting and emblematic case of disregard for security and the lives of others who's this one." So we've talked about two major legal cases here, right? The criminal case that several of the suspects face and the civil case, but according to Andrealli, there could be a third case on the horizon too. There has been a lot of sexics commentary about the fact that she was a young girl and people talking about how they wanted to see her body. The ladies I can tell is that the people who made those disgusting comments about her body in the morgue and how it was going to go down. They are being investigated. We had two congresswomen who went to the prosecution and asked for these people to be investigated regarding their comments. So there's really a three-prong investigation into everything happening here, and multiple different lawsuits and/or charges going on all at the same time. But the bottom line here is that Maria and her family deserve justice. She was buried on the 14th just one day after her death. Her family has since released a statement saying, quote, "It is essential that all responsibilities are rigorously ascertained, and that all those involved are duly held accountable for their actions and omissions." I mean, this is such a devastating case, and what I just can't get over is that it was totally preventable. This young woman didn't have to die, but now we're left to pick up the pieces and make sense of what info we do have. So to get a better idea of all of that, I want to turn to a special guest who's really been following this case since it broke. It's Law and Crimes' very own Jesse Weber, host of Sidebar. Jesse, thank you so much for coming on Scandal. It's great to see you today. It's great to see you. Thanks for having me back. I loved it. I think I've been on what two times before, and it was my-- - Two or three, yeah. - Is this the truck driver? - Look at number three. - Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. - Yeah. And Jesse, we're talking about a story that I know you've covered at least three times on Sidebar. This one is so sad, the details of this case. I mean, can you make sense of this for me? How did something like this even happen? I can't get over it. That's the question, right? That's the question. Now, one of the complicating factors of this is it's in Brazil, right? You know, it's confusing how something like this could happen anywhere. But when you're dealing with Brazil and you're dealing with local authorities and local law and local media reporting, I don't know if something's getting lost in translation and trying to make sense of it. But it seems to me, obviously, there was a mistake that was made. I mean, it becomes a question and I see this what's really interesting. Three people have been arrested and charged. There's three other people that have apparently been arrested. I don't think they've been charged yet. But they can't determine, based on the reporting, whose responsibility it was to secure her. Now, what's really alarming about it is there's a rope, right, that you see in the video. I don't know if that's the rope per se. But anybody watching her being lifted in that Superman pose and being, you know, allegedly throwing off the platform, you can tell she's not connected to anything and immediately after, there's the, you hear it on tape, like, "Guys, the rope, the rope," or somebody says the rope's not connected. It's like, "How does something like that happen?" Where if you take what, I believe, one of the defense attorney says they've done a number of these jumps, their professionals, how do you not have a checklist? How do you not, how do you miss that? Now, there might be something they say, "Oh, they were distracted, people were filming them," whatever it may be, it's not an excuse. Because that's the number one thing. It's the number one thing, is she connected? And what makes it even more disturbing is not only the allegations that they're facing and not only what happened to her, but there's the claim afterwards that there was a cover-up. Two of them allegedly tried to run away, there's missing evidence. It's just a really, really disturbing case. Yeah, there's so many things that we can break apart by what you just said, but I'm going to start with the first, the basics, the safety basics here. And I know that America kind of has this reputation globally for being very litigious. You know, we're ready to sue people we have, to sign waivers before we go places, all of that. But it seems, at least according to the research that I've done, and I believe the experts that you spoke to, it's kind of common to have rope jumping in Brazil, but it doesn't mean that it's legal. In fact, it is illegal. And there were a lot of protocols or procedures that simply aren't in place, is that what you found? So when I talk to experts, they seem to suggest you can do this. It's not like it's illegal to do rope jumping. It was illegal to do it off that bridge. That was an abandoned bridge. It was a rail line. It was called the Skeleton Bridge. They're now going to demolish it because there was so much blowback over this. But also, there's been concerns for quite some time about safety reasons. But rope jumping is a real thing. It's like budgie jumping. The difference, of course, is budgie jumping is like the cord is different. And when you go down, it has that vertical bouncing effect. Whereas rope jumping, you're thrown off, and then it has a pendulum. It's a real thing. But you have to have the proper certification. One of the disturbing aspects about this case is they say this group that was operating it, they weren't certified. They weren't licensed. They weren't authorized to do this, which I think will be an important factor for the legal case. But they were allegedly just operating this activity. And it's an adventurous activity. It happens. It doesn't think it is-- There's always a result in something like this, but it is obviously a dangerous activity. You talk about a waiver, yeah sure somebody would wave away their rights to sue if in connection with a dangerous activity, but I would make the argument that's if the protocols are met. It's not if you don't wave away you being strapped up properly. You don't wave away. You're not being attached with a rope. This is a difference between if you had a rope, you make a jump and you accidentally hit a wall or something. This is much, much different and I don't even think a waiver would necessarily, if this happened in the United States, I don't even think a waiver would necessarily grant immunity to the group or the people involved in this, but it's a real thing. It happens and I think there does become a question of A, how were they able to operate in this way without having the proper certification authorization and B, what were the credentials and was there a lapse? Was there an oversight here? You know, one of the experts that you spoke to that we actually have featured throughout this episode is Matt Lawrence, a bungee jumping expert who basically went through and something you pointed out, yes, these guys could have been distracted. There were people taking photos or videos, whatever, but we see this all the time when people go bungee jumping, especially here in the United States. I've had friends who done it. They take photos, it happens and yet I haven't seen anything like this, but what Matt brought up is that usually you have a second or third, maybe even fourth set of eyes to go through and make sure, okay, do you have this rope hooked up? Is the backup hooked up? Is everything in order before the person even gets into the jumping position? All of these things need to be met and it seems like in this case, it didn't happen as you pointed out. We see her literally in the video free falling and that kind of leads into my next question here, the allegation of a cover up here. There have been reports that Maria went down wearing a body camera camera that she had on her. She even had this wristband that indicates she had a body cam and yet the camera has not been recovered. It seems that there are some reports that maybe it was stolen or removed from the scene. What do you think about this? The tampering with evidence allegations? So there's two aspects of it, right? So after this happens, there's the allegation that two of the defendants ran away into a wooded area before they were apprehended. We call that in the law consciousness of guilt. Number two, there's been three more arrests of three people that were involved in this and it's based on one of the allegations of obstruction. So there's one allegation that there was the deletion of evidence, digital evidence, what that may be. I've heard reports that are possibly their social media accounts of the company, interesting. But yeah, there's been reports that Maria Dorda had a GoPro camera, which wouldn't be uncommon for somebody engaging in adventurous activities to have something like that and there was at least I think one witness who came forward and said they saw the camera being removed, obviously very alarming. We have gotten this reporting that when these three arrests happen, the additional arrests there have been search warrants for to try to locate where this camera is, was it destroyed, was it removed, where is it, we don't really know. But it is, if the allegations are true, it's an important piece of evidence because A, it will not only document the timeline, but I'm curious if it picked up any communications, any conversations about the rope being secured or not. And I think that's going to be really key, aside from the fact that my gosh, how unbelievably devastating would it be to hear that footage and see that footage of her fall? I mean, that's just so unthinkable and so terrifying. But it's really important what did it capture before, the moments, the minutes, the seconds before she was thrown off that platform. So it's a key piece of evidence that they need to find in this case and when I first reported it and I said, wait a minute, the GoPro is missing. I was like, how did you not find it? It must be in the area. And then the idea that maybe it was taken. So that's what goes to this idea of, you know, it's one thing, it's a complete accident. This was a fluke. Then it goes into the idea of, uh-oh, if people are trying to cover up or allegedly cover up what they did, that's what makes a case even stronger. Yeah, so you talked about consciousness of guilt here, which if this is true, if the people actually did run and grab this camera and take it away, that to me does screen consciousness of guilt because they're like, okay, something clearly went wrong here. I want to delete the evidence. I want to get rid of it, remove it from the scene completely. But it kind of goes into my next question too because maybe we have consciousness of guilt based on these allegations. But do we have intent here? Do we have mens rare because the charges here include murder, but this to me seems more like negligence. What are your thoughts on that half of it? So I spoke to Adrialie Barka who is a Brazilian criminal defense lawyer and I have to tell you I'm still a little confused as to all this charge, but basically it's homicide with an eventual intent or homicide with eventual malice and I think it was a way to have them locked up so that the investigation can continue and they can gather evidence. And when I read the reporting on it, those charges don't necessarily mean that they intended to kill her, but they acted in such a reckless manner that they disregarded what was a clear and known risk and if you go to the idea of how could you not know that she wasn't attached or you didn't even take the ability to attach her to the cords, you can see why that would be a charge here. I haven't seen anything to suggest that they planned this, that they wanted her dead, they intended to kill her, but because it's such an egregious situation and it's such the allegations of this are so abnormal, the idea of not the rope breaking, but the she wasn't attached, you can understand where they're saying this is above and beyond just a mere accent or mere negligence, it's something more. I'm not an expert in Brazilian law, but this is how I understand it to be and it's a very serious charge and I learned this too from Adrially, that they can't go to trial unless everybody's charged, like if they charge three people, they can't go to trial on three people and then wait for the other, they all have to be charged in the same trial, they have to go to trial all at the same time, so either three people or six people and I said they're well, like what about the people, the other three people who are arrested who were even part of the jump, like there was one below, there's one who operated, she's like they would all basically share responsibility for what happens, so look, I think it goes to this idea of it's like in between, as far as I can see, in between like intentional killing and just mere negligence, it's something greater than that unless that. Right, this isn't like a normal case we cover on scandal like Brian Walsh, for example, who had these really incriminating Google searches, all of a sudden his wife disappears, okay, that shows, you know, pre-meditation intent. That isn't the case here, but what you pointed out the fact that they all need to go to trial at the same time, interesting and the differences between what we have and see here in the United States versus Brazil, and something else that I wanted to talk about speaking of Brazil and all of this is the federal government here, so the city or town, the municipality, whatever it is, where this happened, I guess was raising the alarm for years and was like SOS, please help, people are coming to this skeleton bridge, which at the very least is the scariest name, not only does it sound scary, it looks scary, I mean, this is like an unfinished bridge that never actually was used for what it was created for the railway, it's kind of covered with trees and moss and, you know, the areas overtaking it, people then come in this underground world of rope jumping to kind of jump off this, and the municipality is like, hey you guys, this is not great, and they're alleging that the federal government was basically enticing people to come there to kind of promote this, I mean, what are your thoughts on that part of it at all? I think that's a really important and disturbing aspect of this story, that there were letters sent to the federal government to shut this down, that this is a danger, that there's been accidents there before, and it takes like something like this for it to be demolished. I mean, go back to consciousness of guilt, it's very different, but wouldn't you say if you're going to demolish the bridge after this, it kind of confirms what everybody had been warning about, and I think that's a really, really big problem. Now, at the same time, it doesn't alleviate, it doesn't take away from the potential liability of the people involved, they still operated this jump, they're still potentially on the hook, but the idea of that they had the area, they had this place to be able to do this, that's another big consideration of this case and another big problem that's going to have to be sorted out by the government. I mean, even the mayor of that municipality has really quite taken it back and have said about what happened here. Yeah, I'd be one thing if the government had put up rails or blocked it off, and people climbed over or went under, and that would be one thing, that's not what happened here. It seems to me there were no railways, there were no safeguards, it seems like, at least according to the reporting I've seen, the government just kind of let it go, and to your point now, it's going to be demolished, I mean, all around just a tragic case, but I'm going to ask you this last question, Jesse, what do you expect moving on from here? Because right now we have the three people charged, three more arrested, what's going to happen with them? Do you expect a trial? Do you expect a release? I mean, just on your best hypotheses, what's ahead? So again, no expert in Brazilian law, Brazilian investigations, but it seems to me based on what I've been discussing and who I've been interviewing, they need to gather a little bit more evidence in this case. They need to look at what the digital, the digital evidence shows. I think they need to look at the pattern of practice. What is this group in doing in the past, what is their certifications, what is their training, all the circumstances by which Maria Eduardo was set up. for this, and they need to find that GoPro. They really need to find that camera and speak to witnesses as well about what they observe leading up to this because it does become a question, how on earth is it possible that she cannot be strapped in before, you know, seemingly thrown off that bridge? So I think they need to figure out, find more evidence. They're gonna have to make a determination about whether they charge those three other people that were arrested, and I believe in Brazil, there is a time limit by which they have to do that, and if they say, okay, we're going to charge them or not charge them, then the case is going to move forward against the people who are charged, and it's going to be interesting what the defense is. The defense so far, you see this idea of they were in shock, they don't know who was responsible for what, so you kind of see the finger being pointed at other individuals, but I think we're still in the early stages of this, and again, trying to report on something that's in a different jurisdiction is tough, but we're doing the best that we can and trying to speak to the right experts about it because it really is a story, and the reason I saw it, I saw it on social media, I saw how crazy it was. I was like, this is a story that deserves attention. When I heard about the criminal charges, I'm like, now we really got to jump on it. Her family deserves answers. Her family deserves justice, whatever that might be. I think this is a really important case about accountability, and you have to bring attention to this, because I mean, when was the last time you talked about bungee jumping or rope jumping? I don't want it to take a case like this for there to be, you know, a change or for there to be some sort of movement or some sort of, you know, a change in the law, whatever it is, but sometimes it takes something like this to bring awareness to an issue that's been buried under the rug for quite some time. And I mean, you even studied yourself the fact that there's video of her being thrown off the ledge because that is what it is. We've all seen the video. It's all over social media, and it's harrowing. I mean, I can't even think of a word to describe it, other than that. By the way, one thing we didn't even address, and I'd really told me about this, do you know that after this happened, people in Brazil were making comments about Maria Duarte's body that that became the topic of conversation, and they were like, I think it was about her autopsy, and she told me it's possible those people could be criminally charged for the comments that they make. Which that to me, we have that in this episode, that to me, I love that because this is a young woman who did not desert. She's 21 years old, plus her family, her friends, the entire world is looking at this case. Nobody should be making comments like that at this time. That's not what we should be focused on at all. That was a really interesting aspect to the case, and I'm glad that you brought that up to you, Jesse. Yeah, she brought it up to me. It was actually the first time I interviewed her. She's like, before you get started, I have to mention this, and before we finished up our last interview, she wanted to bring awareness to that. Their freedom of speech protections are a little bit different than here in the United States, but it was an important aspect because you could just imagine what distress this is causing, and for the family on top of everything else that they were experiencing. Truly such a tragic case. One, we're definitely going to keep following here on Scandal, sidebar, you've been leading the charge and all the reporting. So, Jesse Weber, thank you for coming on and lending us your expertise for this case. Thank you so much for having me, Sarah. I always appreciate it. And that's where today's episode of Scandal leaves us for now. If you like what you saw and you want to see more, connect with me on social media. You can find me on places like Instagram @SierraGillespie. Thanks for watching today's episode of Scandal. As always, I'm your host, SierraGillespie and I'll see you next time.