August 27th, 2012
NewsRescue– We recently wrote an article on the current global trend of picture obsession. People just want to be seen and take so many pictures with such degrees of chronic self obsession and immolation, it is pathological.
See: NewsRescue- Photo Obsession
In the two sad stories below, women trying to get that extra shot, plunged to their deaths. Perhaps it is time the world slowed down with those pictures:
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The wedding dress and shoes of tragic bride who fell from rocks and drowned during photo-shoot
- Maria Pantazopoulos, 30, fell into river after her wedding dress got wet
- She was posing in her gown for pictures after getting married in June
- Body found two and a half hours later by a diver after police and firefighters scoured the area where she fell near Dorwin Falls, Canada
- Family friend: Ms Pantazopoulos said ‘I want to have great pictures and memories of me in my wedding dress’
Lying on rocks, these are the bridal gown and high-heeled shoes worn by a newlywed woman who was killed when she fell into a river while posing for photographs.
Real estate agent Maria Pantazopoulos, 30, drowned after her dress got wet and she was dragged into the river near a ‘violently’ rushing waterfall in Canada.
Friends said she had been taking part in an increasingly popular ritual called ‘Trash the Dress’, in which brides pose for pictures while playfully destroying their wedding gowns.
Horror: Maria Pantazopoulos’ wedding dress and shoes remain on the rocks after she was dragged into a river to her death while posing for pictures
Ms Pantazopoulos slipped and fell into the Ouareau River near Dorwin Falls, north of Montreal, on Friday afternoon. Her body was found about two and a half hours later.
The newly-wed yelled ‘I’m slipping, I’m slipping, I’m slipping,’ before falling off the rock she was perched on for her wedding pictures, according to CBC.
Ms Pantazopoulos had commissioned the shoot following her June 9 wedding.
Family friend Leeza Pousoulidis said: ‘She’s a really fun girl, and she just didn’t want her wedding dress sitting in a box in the closet.
Tragedy: Maria Pantazopoulos, 30, died while posing for photographs in her wedding gown. She drowned after her dress got wet and dragged her into a river near a ‘violently’ rushing waterfall in Canada
‘She said “I want to have fun with my wedding dress. I want to have great pictures and memories of me in my wedding dress.”‘
Ms Pousoulidis said her friend was ‘a strong, tough girl’.
‘She was very petite, but she was strong in character and in physical strength as well,’ Ms Pousoulidis told the Montreal Gazette.
‘She was very happy and caring. She had a big heart.’
Ms Pantazopoulos slipped while she was being photographed by Louis Pagakis, who told CTV Montreal that he did everything he could to save her.
‘She had her wedding dress on and she said, “take some pictures of me while I swim a little bit in the lake,”‘ he said.
‘She went in and her dress got heavy, I tried everything I could to save her.’
Quebec provincial police spokesman Sgt. Ronald McInnis described the site as being elevated and rocky, with water ‘violently’ rushing below.
‘She was doing the photo shoot in about six inches or one foot of water when part of her wedding dress got soaked and became extremely heavy,’ Mr McInnis told MailOnline.
‘She started slipping and falling down when the photographer grabbed her but she was too heavy that he couldn’t pull her from the edge.
‘Another person tried to grab her but also was unable to save her from falling into the river.’
Mr McInnis said Ms Pantazopoulos, from Laval, a small Island north of Montreal, was found 100 feet from where she fell by a private diver who knows the river and volunteered to help with the search.
Rescue: Search teams scour the river in an attempt to save Ms Pantazopoulos
The diver pulled the young woman’s body from an area of the river which was 20 feet deep.
‘She had sunk to the bottom,’ Mr McInnis said.
Two witnesses, believed to be the photographer and an assistant, were hospitalised for extreme shock.
Mr McInnis said the bride’s husband was not present for the photo-shoot and neither were any family members.
However, her cousins and her brother went to the site when they heard that she had fallen.
‘It’s horrible,’ Mr McInnis said. ‘This is the first time I’ve heard of a story like that. I told my partner, this is a story that is going to go all around the world.’
Ms Pantazopoulos wanted the fun photos taken at the falls, perched on the rocks in her gown, Marco Michaud, a colleague of the photographer taking the pictures told CBC.
She chose the beautiful site, located near the small city of Rawdon, as the backdrop.
Ms Pantazopoulos’s family have declined to speak to the media.
Police discovered the woman’s body about two and a half hours after she went missing
Slipped: Ms Pantazopoulos was standing on a rock when she got into difficulty
Distraught: Photographer Louis Pagakis said that he did everything he could to save Ms Pantazopoulos after she got into danger
New York tourist swept away by raging river posing for picture near waterfall in Puerto Rico
PUBLISHED: 16:15 EST, 26 August 2012 | UPDATED: 16:15 EST, 26 August 2012
A New York City woman tragically fell to her death into a rushing river while posing for photos near a waterfall at a tropical rainforest in Puerto Rico.
The body of Bronx resident Kenah Huggins was found on Sunday in a river in El Yunque National Forest near Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, after she slipped into the raging waters on Saturday.
Huggins was apparently taking photographs in the mountain park and was swept away in the swift-moving waters after she lost her footing.
Tragedy: The body of Bronx resident Kenah Huggins was found on Sunday in a river in El Yunque National Forest near Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, after she slipped into the raging waters on Saturday
‘She ended up in the pond, slipped, lost balance and fell into the water,’ search and rescue manager Victor Lasanta told Puerto Rican newspaper, El Nuevo Dia.
The rushing waters ‘carried her down the waterfalls’ as her friends helplessly watched, unable to reach her, Lasanta added.
Police began efforts to recover the body at noon Sunday and her body was located later.
The New Yorker, who was 35 according to Lasanta, was in the Caribbean Island with friends and had no connections to the area.
‘On behalf of the family an friends I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for their warm words and condolences we truly appreciate every kind word and gesture,’ a friend of the victim, Nicole Taylor, wrote on Huggins’ Facebook page.
The rain forest, located near Rio Grande, includes several waterfalls and rivers
‘One of Kenah’s last updates said ‘I’m a thinker, I absolutely live in my head ( a lot ) but I know I can’t change the future & I am strong believer that everything has a purpose for how, why, where & when…… So just go with it 😉 keep those words in your heart, from her. I will continue to update this page with any information that I receive regarding her homegoing services,’ Taylor added.
El Yunque is located in northeastern Puerto Rico and receives up to 1 million visitors a year. It is the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. National Forest system
The national park is the only tropical rain forest in the U.S. National Forest System
El Yunque National Forest welcomes roughly 1 million visitors a year
