The managers of an extreme bungee jumping attraction hugely popular with British tourists to northern France were being questioned by police today following the death of a young woman.
Crowds watched in horror on Sunday evening when the 28-year-old dropped to her death in Audincthun, near St Omer, in the Pas de Calais.
Her 32-year-old boyfriend was alongside her, and suffered ‘very serious injuries’, said a local police spokesman, adding that the man ‘was being treated in a hospital in Lille’.
The police spokesman confirmed that two people running the crane from where jumps had been taking place for more than two years were ‘under investigation for manslaughter following the death of a client’.
The couple had been given safety instructions, climbed to the top of the crane, and then leapt off the structure for what should have been a ‘tandem jump’.
‘It is 65 meters high and they were meant to fall down on an elasticated rope, and then bounce up again,’ said another source close to the investigation.
‘But instead something went wrong with the mechanism and they hit the ground at speed,’ said the source, adding that the elastic ‘did not break’.
It is thought that the system malfunctioned when the couple was some 15 meters from the ground.
Ambulance workers and other medical staff rushed to the scene, but the woman was confirmed dead shortly after 6pm. The man was rushed to an intensive care unit at University College Hospital, Lille.
The couple, who have not been named, were French nationals from Hallennes-lez-Haubourdin, near Lille.
The crane has now been shut down, with much of the equipment belonging to the business seized by investigators.
Prosecutors are following a theory that the managers of the bungee jump ignored basic security and safety.
It is situated in the Domaine de la Carriere in Audincthun – an attraction which has attracted visitors from all over Europe, including many from Britain.
The jump was recently featured in a France 3 Pas de Calais TV report, with the station highlighting how popular it was.
