A disturbing video captured the moment blood-curdling screams rang out after a tourist fell to her death from the Grand Canyon. Multiple men, women and children could be heard wailing with shock and grief after the July 3 accident on an unapproved trail, with one man roaring ‘Somebody fell.’
Another woman stood at a safe distance, close to camerawoman Miriam Weiner said: ‘That’s why you don’t go down there. That’s why everybody’s sitting over there taking pictures, you can fall and someone gets hurt. That’s why you don’t go down there. That’s why there’s no trails down there.
Weiner shared the chilling clip to her Twitter account, writing: ‘woman fell to her death today at Mather point. You can hear people screaming…. we realized someone must have fallen and we called 911.’
The woman who fell to her death has since been named as Maria Andrea Salgado Lopez, 59. She was visiting Mather Point on the Canyon’s South Rim in Arizona, and was snapping pictures shortly before losing her footing and plunging around 100 feet to her death.
Weiner later told ABC15 how she and her daughter had been making their first trip to the famous natural wonder when the tragedy unfolded. She said: ‘It’s really sad to go out there and think you’re just going for a vacation and sightseeing, and you come back without your mom or your wife.
‘I saw people out in that area start to hug each other, trying to comfort each other and shield them from what they were seeing. So, that told me this is really bad.’
Around 12 people a year die in the Grand Canyon National Park, although some of those deaths are related to heat and other health issues. Park rangers have repeatedly warned visitors to use their common sense, and stick to approved trails to help keep them safe.
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