A deaf man who changed his mind about killing himself after climbing a huge pylon died after accidentally touching live wires as he climbed down.
Victor Jose Arroyo Gonzalez, 20, had scaled the huge pylon in the city of Barranquilla in northern Colombia’s Atlantico department and threatened to throw himself off. But police officers and onlookers reportedly talked him out of killing himself and he had just started climbing back down when tragedy struck.
A huge flash and a cloud of smoke was seen as the young man touched a live wire and fell from near the top of the pylon. His limp body flipped around another cable lower down before somersaulting all of the way to the ground below as a crowd of onlookers screamed in horror. The disturbing scenes were captured by witnesses down below in the Los Olivos area of the city.
Mr Gonzalez had earlier been heard shouting: ‘I am going to throw myself off, I do not want to continue living anymore, I cannot cope anymore.’
He was declared dead at the scene. The man was reportedly suffering from depression and had previously climbed tall structures to threaten suicide. Barranquilla, a port on the Caribbean Sea, is the only major city in South America that was populated before its formal foundation by Europeans.