Mother falls to death taking selfie from 27th floor

Photographs have emerged of the Portuguese woman who was filmed falling off a balcony of a high-rise building in Panama while trying to take a selfie on Friday. Sandra Manuela Da Costa Macedo, 27, had just recently arrived to Panama where she had a job as a teacher, according to the Portuguese newspaper O Minho. Macedo was a native of the northern Portuguese town of Aves. She is survived by two children.

Susana Cunha Barros, a Portuguese woman, posted a tribute on Facebook to Macedo. ‘So long,’ Barros wrote in the caption above a photo of the teacher. “Sandra... thank you for your contribution in the education of my daughter Helena... Will always be remembered with great affection.’ Macedo was filmed from afar as she tragically fell to her death from the 27th floor of a high-rise block while losing her balance taking a selfie. She went over a balcony railing she was leaning against as she took the snap. Sickening video footage showed her still holding the selfie stick as she plunged to the ground below. An onlooker filming the tragedy shouted: ‘She’s mad, there she goes, look at her, look at her, she’s fallen.’

Paramedics rushed to the scene, a building called the Luxor Tower in a popular neighbourhood of Panama City called El Cangrejo after the alarm was raised just after 10 am local time yesterday. The woman, initially identified as a Portuguese holidaymaker who had just arrived in Panama although a woman describing herself as a friend later took to social media to say she was a mother-of-two who had gone to the country to work as a teacher, was already dead when they arrived.

Construction workers on a neighbouring tower block are said to have yelled at her to get down from the railing she was half-sat on before her death plunge, but strong winds blowing at the time meant she couldn’t hear their warning cries. Local reports said the incident was still under investigation, but police were focussing on the theory that a gust of wind may have knocked her off balance.