Dad killed in bungee jump accident after cord length blunder – family watched in horror

A father endured a terrifying final ordeal when his bungee jump cord proved to be too long, sending him crashing into the ground following a 43-metre jump as his family watched on in absolute horror.

Fabio Ezequiel de Moraes, 36, died as his loved ones looked on from a bridge in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2016.

The father-of-one let out a haunting, joyful scream as he launched himself from a ledge and plunged headfirst into the valley below. Tragically, the bungee team hired by Moraes reportedly miscalculated the length of rope required for the descent, and the thrill-seeker struck the ground head first.

Moraes was rushed to hospital in Mairinique but later died from his head injuries. His heartbreaking final jump was witnessed by his wife, brother and six-year-old son, reports the Irish Mirror.

Brazilian publication Diario reported that Moraes had originally planned to complete the jump alongside his young son, but decided to go alone at the very last moment.

Authorities launched a full investigation into the fatality and seized the bungee equipment used by the team engaged by Moraes.

Just a month prior to Moraes’ tragic death, the owner of a bungee jump attraction in South Korea was charged with negligence after a 29 year old woman plummeted 43 metres into water when her cord snapped mid-air.

The woman sustained serious head and neck injuries but remarkably survived the fall. In 2000, Matthew Coleman, 22, lost his life while bungee jumping in the Swiss Alps after staff at Adventure World attached an incorrect length cord, securing him to a ski gondola situated more than 300 feet above the ground.

Matthew, an American, was the first of his group of seven to leap from the cable car. Footage capturing the jump preparations purportedly shows the guides fastening the wrong bungee cord to Coleman, according to police.

Adventure World founder Georg Hoedle confirmed that his employees had used a cord designed for jumps of approximately 600 feet, when Coleman’s drop was closer to 330 feet.

The ropes were colour-coded — red for longer jumps, green for shorter ones — as a safety precaution, Hoedle explained. The company’s bungee jump master, who had been employed by Adventure World since 1994, attached the red cable to Coleman, Hoedle confirmed.

“If you use the red, you are reminded that you have to be more cautious,” he said. “There is no explanation for it. They just made the mistake.”

Coleman, who stocked grocery stores for a Coca-Cola bottler in Frederick County, was enjoying a 10-day European holiday with five friends, his family revealed.

Coleman’s parents travelled to Switzerland to bring home his body, while an aunt and uncle disclosed that Coleman had telephoned his mother just days before his death to wish her a happy Mother’s Day and share his bungee jumping plans.

To their knowledge, he had never jumped before, and his mother was “not real excited” about it, said his aunt, Diane Bernoske of Damascus. The sport “should be completely banned from this country and anywhere else,” declared Coleman’s uncle, David Denu of Germantown.

“There’s nobody who can say it’s safe. It makes me sick to my stomach that anyplace would think it’s safe. . . . It was my nephew, but it could’ve been somebody else’s nephew or son. He could’ve gone second. It could have been somebody else who went first.”