Friday 1 March 2013

China's lovers' leap: Horrified photographer captures suicide couple flinging themselves off bridge over the Yangtze as he tried to take a picture of the fog


This is the moment a newspaper photographer trying to take a snap of heavy fog that had blanketed a bridge captured a couple's suicide leap.
The photographer had been standing on a viewing platform ready to take a snap of the fog shrouded bridge across the Wuhan Yangtze River in Wuhan, at Hubei province in central China.
He said: 'The mist was so thick on the bridge so large that it looked as if the bridge was standing on and disappeared into air. Like a bridge into nothingness.
Pictured: A person jumps off the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge in Hubei province
Pictured: A person jumps off the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge in Hubei province
Falling: The young couple jumped into the Yangtze River from the bridge one after another in the haze yesterday
According to local police, it is not known why the pair decided to throw themselves to their deaths
Police identified the man from some of the possessions he left at the top and said he was a 20-year-old migrant worker named as Liu Han
'To be honest I didn't even see the first person jump because I was concentrating so much on the camera settings and I didn't realise at first that I had snapped the man jumping to his death
'It was only then after snapping the photograph that I heard someone shout that somebody had jumped. I heard him hit the water below and then seconds later a woman climbed onto the bridge and jumped as well.
'I was totally paralysed - there was no way I could get anywhere near her, I still had my hand on the camera and I tensed and shot off another few frames entirely by accident - but ended up photographing the woman as well.'
Police identified the man from some of the possessions he left at the top and said he was a 20-year-old migrant worker named as Liu Han, and believed that the girl who has not yet been identified was his lover.
It is not known why the pair had made a pact to throw themselves to their deaths.


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