A couple died in Yosemite while taking a selfie, says his brother

SAN FRANCISCO – A married couple who fell to the death in Yosemite National Park last week while taking a selfie, the brother of man said Tuesday. Meenakshi Moorthy, 30, and her husband, Vishnu Viswanath, 29, were Indian expatriates living in California.

She was an "adrenaline junkie" who described herself. He took "god worthy photos" of the couple posing at the edge of a cliff and jumping from planes. These images appeared on social media and on a travel blog that attracted thousands of followers.

The couple's last trip has turned out to be their last. They set up their tripod near a ledge in a park overlooking California, said Viswanath's brother, Jishnu Viswanath, to the Associated Press. The visitors saw the camera the next morning and alerted the park guards, who "used very powerful binoculars to find them," he said.

Rangers have found their corpses about 800 feet below Taft Point, where visitors can stroll to the edge of a dizzying granite cornice with spectacular views of the Yosemite Valley. The "recovery operation" involved Park Rangers using technical climbing and rappel techniques, in addition to helicopter support from the California Highway Patrol for short-range operation, the park said. National Yosemite in a statement.

Their publications on social networks, in search of thrills, prefigure the relationship of the couple with the growing problem of deaths by selfie.

A study published this month in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care revealed that 259 people died taking a selfie between October 2011 and November 2017. The report, based on the findings of researchers in India having searched international media, indicates the main causes of the selfie the dead were drowning, usually involving people washed away by waves or falling from a boat, followed by people killed while posing in front of a moving train, deaths due to falls from high places or taking pictures with dangerous animals.

More than 10 people have died in Yosemite this year, some from natural causes and others from falls, Park spokesman Scott Gediman said.

Moorthy and Viswanath were born in India and lived for a few years in the United States, most recently in the San Francisco Bay Area. Cisco India said Viswanath was a software engineer based at the company's headquarters in San Jose, California, in Silicon Valley.

They graduated in 2010 from the Faculty of Engineering Chengannur, in Alapuzha district, in the state of Kerala, India, told APA. one of their teachers, Nisha Kuruvilla. She said that Moorthy and Viswanath were both good students who loved to travel and who were married in a Hindu temple in Kerala, southern India, four years ago.

Moorthy described it with her husband as "obsessed with the trip" on their blog, "Holidays & Happily Ever Afters", which was canceled Tuesday. It was filled with photos of the couple in front of snowy peaks and during romantic trips across Europe, where they took selfies in a gondola in Venice, at the leaning tower of Pisa and at the Vatican.

Moorthy wanted to work full time as a tourism blogger, said her brother-in-law. She's described in the blog as an "eccentric free spirit" and "an adrenaline junkie – roller coaster and parachuting do not scare me." She posed at the edge of the Grand Canyon, dressed in a Wonder Woman costume, and wrote: "We are many, including yours, to admire the brazen attempts to stand at the edge of cliffs and scrapers. But did you know that the gust of wind can be FATAL- "Is our life worth a photo?"

The day the couple dies, another couple who hiked to Taft Point captured photos of Moorthy before she fell, saying that she appeared in the background of two of their selfies. Sean Matteson said Moorthy stood out from the crowd watching the sunset on the gazebo because his hair was dyed bright pink. He said that she had made him a little nervous because she was close to the edge.

"She was very close to the edge, but it seemed like she was having a good time," said Matteson of Oakland, California. "She gave me the willies, there is no guardrail, I was not about to approach so close to the edge." But she seemed to be She did not seem to be in distress or anything. "

Yosemite spokeswoman Jamie Richards said officials were investigating the deaths, which could take several days.