An inquest heard that a British university student plummeted to her death in front of her classmates after slipping in a huge puddle on the famous Cliffs of Moher in Ireland.
Roxan Bastaens, a 20-year-old Belgian citizen studying at the University of Edinburgh, went trekking in western Ireland in May of last year, just a few weeks before her 21st birthday.
The Clare Coroner’s Court in Kilrush heard that she and three friends, two French students and Italian-born Giulia Bracchi, had arrived to Doolin the night before to stay before going on the cliff walk.
Ms. Bracchi said that the party left that morning in good weather and with the correct boots for hiking.
She told the court, “The trail was safe at first, but later it got slippery and there was no barrier.”
“All of us were wearing hiking boots,” she claimed. It wasn’t hard at all. There were a lot of people on the cliffs. The trail looked safe.
She said that Bastaens was holding her camera and monitoring her step to avoid a pool of water.
“She was walking around a big puddle with her camera in one hand and looking at her steps,” Ms. Bracchi said. “She fell forward and began to roll down. I attempted to capture her, but I couldn’t. Everything happened so fast.
“I looked down and saw her hit the cliffs twice before she disappeared,” she added. Later, she noticed her friend’s body floating face down in the sea below.
Bastaens died in a horrible way at the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland only weeks before her 21st birthday last year.
Isobel O’Dea, the county coroner, said that the death was an accident. “We have a lot of deaths at the Cliffs of Moher every year, and this was completely unplanned,” she told the family.
Toxicology testing showed that Bastaens did not have any drugs or alcohol in his body. A postmortem showed that she died immediately away from the injuries she sustained when she fell. Ms. O’Dea claimed that her death “would have been instantaneous, and she wouldn’t have suffered.”
In August, the Clare Local Development Company closed off large parts of the walking trail, and they are still closed because of safety concerns.
A lot of people have died at the Cliffs of Moher in the previous several years. Around 1.5 million individuals go to the site every year.
Experts say that “serious construction work” is needed to make the area safe. People are also anxious that the trail is too close to the brink of the cliff.
Last July, a 12-year-old boy fell into a puddle and died right away. People stated a man in his 20s fell off the monument in 2019 while he was taking a selfie.