Woman Falls to Death Taking Photo on Cliff to Celebrate End of Coronavirus Lockdown

Woman Falls to Death Taking Photo on Cliff to Celebrate End of Coronavirus Lockdown

A woman from Kazakhstan fell over 100 feet to her death on Sunday after she climbed a safety barrier to take a photo celebrating the end of her city's pandemic lockdown.

The woman, Olesia Suspitsina, 31, was on a hike in Antalya's Duden Park after an extended lockdown due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. While on the hike, Suspitsina climbed a safety barrier and asked her friend to take a picture of her on the edge of a cliff near waterfalls in the park. Sadly, she subsequently slipped on wet grass and fell over 100 feet. Authorities were able to find Suspitsina's body in the water below the falls and eventually ruled the death an accident.

She had worked as a tour guide for several years, with relatives and friends describing her as a "smart and cheerful person" who was highly passionate about the area. Turkey currently has the seventh most coronavirus cases in the world at over 122,000 and over 3,200 deaths, though the country is currently taking steps to relax lockdown rules without initiating a second wave of cases. Sadly, Suspitsina's death is another strong reminder that no photo is worth risking life and limb for. 

Lead image by Saffron Blaze, used under Creative Commons.

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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44 Comments

Sad.

"..... fell over 100 feet to her death ......"

This reminds me of the climber's axiom that every foot you fall adds one percent to the likelihood that you die from the fall:

Fall 10 feet, there is a 10% chance that you will die. Fall 30 feet, a 30% chance that you die. Fall 80 feet, then there's an 80% chance that you die. Etc, etc, etc.

Looks like that mountain climber's adage worked itself out in this scenario.

so best to be near cliffs of up to 99 feet? that way you may live. ;/

just trying to understand. shes from Kazakhstan who fell while in turkey?
their death rate is far lower then others though. in proportion to the us, theyre at "only" 13000

belgiam france and sweden are not doing well at all. we know about italy and spain.
belgiam is with 221,000 deaths in proportion to the us
france is 121,000 deaths in proportion to the us
and sweden has a no lockdown policy that has people dying like flies.
they have 85,500 deaths in proportion to the usa.
theyre thinking about the economy so they have no restrictions at all.

ah mr bernie. ok, now I see.
I didnt say anything about the us and restrictions. sweden has no lockdown restrictions. everything is voluntary. masks distancing isolating. the majority are walking around freely in groups with no masks.

I don't know what you mean when you say, "in proportion to the U.S." Could you please explain that? Also, you never said how COVID deaths there were in the U.S., so that makes the proportion thing even more confusing. I just want to understand what you wrote more fully than I do now, and some clarification would help me with that. Thanks.

usa has more population at 330million vs . adjust for usa population

66000 deaths in the us.
belgium population 11.46
france population 67 million
sweden population 10.23

So the number of deaths you gave, how were those numbers changed from the actual numbers, to account for the difference in population? You need to say how the numbers were arrived at before you go posting them. Explaining how they were calculated is what needs to be done. We need completely explained ideas and statistics, not fragments that leave things out.

well to do maths.
330 divided by 11.46 and multiply that amount by deaths of the country 7765
and you get 224,000. thats very high when the us is at 66000. its also a very small country relatively. its a huge amount per million
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

sweden govt have done nothing. its all voluntary.

It may be easier for people to understand your statistics if you express then in a percentage of the overall population that has died of COVID instead of using one country as an arbitrary base and then changing all of the other countries to try to match it. The way you are changing all of the numbers to "normalize" them can be very misleading and confusing.

The most important thing in statistics is to express them in terms that are simple and easy for the reader to understand.

Reported COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 of population:

Belgium: 67.4

Spain: 52.5

Italy: 46

United Kingdom: 41.4

France: 36.8

Netherlands: 28.5

Ireland: 26.1

Sweden: 26.0

Switzerland: 20.6

United States: 19.8

Portugal: 9.8

Canada: 9.5

Germany: 8.1

Iran 7.5

Ecuador: 6.2

Turkey: 4.0

Peru: 3.5

Brazil 3.1

Mexico: 1.6

Russia: 0.8

China 0.3

India: 0.1

These are rates for all of the countries with at least 1,000 reported COVID-19 deaths as of May 2, 2020 at 3:51 Greenwich Mean Time.

Source: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

Yes, deaths per million (or per any number) is probably about the most accurate stat we can hope for. Number of cases is pretty much irrelevant since different countries test different percentages of the population, and a lot of asymptomatic people won't even get tested.
Of course there are also many different variables to consider, such as the size of the country relative to the population, density of the population in cities, facilities, (like automatic doors and hand free washing facilities), how dumb the population are, how many use public transport, how old the majority of the population are, etc.
All this before even considering how the government reacts to it.
It's possible for a country to impose little to no restrictions, and still have a lower death rate than a country with a full lockdown.
It's a definite wake up call for us.. If it had a 50% mortality rate things would be a lot different.

Well this went down an entirely predictable route... 🙄

People above really need a break from the interweb me thinks lol...

There's also my rule of nines for being pulled over by the police:

Be pulled over by one cop, 9% chance of going to jail.
A second cop? 90% chance.
Third cop? 99%...
and so on.

Life involves many risks, and not just the risk of dying from COVID-19.

Why didn't the "friend" stop her?

How did Corona make her fall? Does it effect balance too?

Poor lady. All these deaths are so sad. I will pray for her

LOL

Let's blame the Lockdown.

Why? She was outside. I don’t get it

"A woman from Kazakhstan"
"her city's pandemic lockdown"
"in Anatyla's Duden Park"
"Turkey currently has ... "

The geography here is extremely confusing.

It says the woman is from Kazakhstan, yet refers to Anatyla as "her city".

Anatyla is a city in Turkey, and is actually spelled Antalya ..... so the writer of the article butchered the spelling.

There is no explanation as to how she can be from Kazakhstan, yet have Antalya be "her city". If she had emigrated from Kazakhstan to Turkey, the writer should have said so, so as to avoid confusion.

It is frustrating that many news writers today seem to be in a hurry to crank out pieces quickly, instead of taking the time to ensure that everything they write makes sense, and that all grammar and spelling is correct.

In elementary school I was taught how to properly write a news story, and yet much of what I read today, both online and in print, does not follow the "rules" that we learned as 9 and 10 year old kids.

Thanks for catching the misspelling!

Not funny. People are dying. Have respect Mr. Bros!

Say that to her poor family

You can still have a heart regardless. If your child die by accident and they have it on the news, you would be sad (hopefully!)

It proves that Darwin was right! There hasn't been a vaccine created to cure stupid. I feel sympathy for her family and friends, but she made a very bad choice and choices have consequences.

Yes, like driving an automobile when one is tired. That is every bit as dangerous and likely to result in death as what this woman did on the clifftop.

When someone dies from taking a risk that is unusual, such as walking close to a cliff top, or getting too close to a Grizzly Bear, we are quick to mention Darwin, and to judge them for being so stupid. Yet when someone dies because they take "normal" risks, such as falling asleep at the wheel, we do not judge them as harshly, and we never mention Darwin in those instances. Why is that? Why are we not more consistent in the way that we feel about very similar things?

Her friends described her as a smart and cheerful person. I'm going with that.

And there's a good chance that she was, right up until she wasn't. She made a really bad choice and it cost her her life.

It took a while, but there it is!!!
The guy who does the Darwin Award comment. You should get an award for posting that worn out trope!

Maybe cliched, but unless you think she made a good decision, then you probably agree with me; decisions have consequences and poor decision usually have negative consequences. Next time, I'll remember to leave Darwin's name out of it. It won't change anything, but at least you won't have to tell me that I used a worn out phrase.

IMO people use that phrase to be clever and mock someone who made bad one or more bad decisions and died.
It was maybe funny in gruesome way about 20 years ago but now on FStopper and Petapixel, everytime someone dies stupidly, someone will rush to say Darwin Award!.
FYI there is even a website for Darwin Awards.

And the list keeps getting longer because people continue to ignore barriers, signs, warning labels, etc., etc. Accidents are one thing, but when one chooses to ignore things that are there for one's safety, a poor choice has been made. Most of the time, the person ignoring the warnings makes it to live another day. But once in a while....

Whenever I see a story like this, I read the comments just to see who will be the first person to make this comment. Not only is insensitive, it is totally unoriginal. Every selfie death story has at least one person who mentions the “Darwin Award”. How can you be proud of posting such a tired, overused, unfunny remark?

There it is. The inevitable comment from someone with neither empathy nor situational awareness...

....a friend huh?

It's one thing to enable by trying to be cool, and another for basically trying to kill someone - I have experienced the latter version of this and the two must absolutely not be equated..

It should also be of note that "friend" and "family" can mean many different things...

Somebody tried to kill you? Oh my goodness how horrible! Are they in prison? What happened?

Please be safe!!!

Not exactly. It was subtle. I went on a trip with my dad as a kid and he took my picture in the Grand Canyon a day after we had a fight. He kept trying to get me to stand closer and closer to the edge. Even when I was two feet away, he constantly tried to get me to back up more until someone was within earshot and suddenly he stopped and had this super guilty look on his face.

He didn't exactly want kill me, but he wouldn't have minded if I'd accidentally fallen to my death. This might sound nuts, but the man had a history - he wasn't stupid, he was just a psycho. He even liked saying it on a regular basis, in so many words.

Nothing happened to him until he died from a stroke. That's just life, in case you aren't aware of how these things work in reality.

Contrast this type of person with someone who simply doesn't micromanage someone else and you can see that there's quite a difference.

Very upsetting. Thank you for sharing. Hope your ok.

He sounded like a very troubled boy. Such a shame. Good thing for the other person who caught him!!

Inactivity causes decline in our physical abilities. Had she been her normal fit self, her sense of balance and ability to recover from a slip might have saved her. Maybe.

Relying on a reference to our former fit selves might be a major mistake when returning to what we like to be doing.

"...after she climbed a safety barrier to take a photo..."
yep

Comments about “Darwin award” and “Natural Selection” are so predictable at this point. You should be embarrassed to make a comment that is equal parts insensitive and unoriginal. Seriously, you should search this site for similar stories about people dying in situations like this and see how many times your comment has been made.

I'm so sorry for this accident that is so close to my home.