A woman walking on the Royal Park Bridge, connecting West Palm Beach to Palm Beach, Florida, died after the span open and the portion she was walking on lifted 50 feet into the air, CNN reports.
Pushing her bicycle, the woman was walking on the pedestrian portion of the bridge, about 10 feet from the mid-point of the span, when the bridge started opening. According to witnesses, she held on to a railing as the section rose into the air. As a pedestrian on the other side of the span tried to reach her, her grip slipped and she plunged around 60 feet to the concrete platform below.
Investigators do not know why the bridge rose with pedestrians still on it. “There are warning signs and there are safety procedures in place for the bridge tenders to follow, with multiple steps and multiple layers of checking to make sure that there are no cars or people on the bridge when it goes up,” West Palm Beach Police spokesman Mike Jachles said.