A British “thrill-seeker” plummeted 630 feet to his death from Spain’s tallest bridge while filming content for social media, officials told a court on Tuesday.
Lewis Stevenson, 26, fell while attempting to scale Castilla-La Mancha without a harness — even though climbing it is “totally prohibited,” according to Macarena Muñoz, a local official in Talavera de la Reina.
When he fell, Stevenson was being filmed by an unidentified 24-year-old friend who had traveled with him to the Spanish city “to climb the bridge and create content for social networks,” Muñoz said, according to the BBC.
The free climber fell from the bridge, which towers over the Tagus River. He died from blunt force trauma to the head, Derby’s assistant coroner Sabyta Kaushal said Tuesday while opening an inquest into the influencer’s Oct. 13 death.
Toxicology tests could take up to a year to come through.
Stevenson garnered a large following on social media traveling the world and performing the dangerous stunts, known as “free-climbing” or “buildering.” His Instagram account has been deactivated since his death.
Stevenson’s mother, Keilia, was in court for Tuesday’s hearing.
“He was a thrill-seeker who loved to travel and have new experiences,” the mom previously said in a tribute after his death.
“Lewis was my boy, my world and my biggest achievement. He continually made me so proud, he was happy and ambitious in life,” the heartbroken mom said.
“We as a whole family supported his adventures around the world, which included amazing places he got to visit like Easter island and Machu Picchu, but unfortunately those adventures also included climbing great heights which we didn’t particularly agree with but understood this was what he loved to do,” she continued.
“He knew his limits and never did anything beyond them. He was a keen photographer and he did this all for passion, not as an influencer.”
Stevenson’s girlfriend, Savannah Parker, had exchanged text messages with him just hours before his death.
She believes that Stevenson, who had been climbing structures for five years, did not slip, but lost consciousness while climbing because he wasn’t feeling well.
“He told his friend he wasn’t feeling well and he said, ‘Shall we go back down?’ Lewis said, ‘Give me a minute,’ and that’s when he lost consciousness and slipped,” Parker told the Daily Mail in October.
“I suspect that he hadn’t eaten … But I don’t know, as long as I’ve known him he has never lost consciousness or passed out.”
His grandfather Clifford Stevenson, from Derby, told the paper their family was “always trying to talk him out of doing things but that was the way he was.
“He loved doing it — he always went out there believing he’d be all right. He did what he did for his own pleasure. He did not get any money for it, he was an adventurer.”
Spanish officials are looking into how to make the Castilla-La Mancha more difficult for daredevils to climb.
