A young woman lost her life trying to take the’perfect photo’. A report shows that there has been 259 selfie death since 2011 and that someone has died every month this year trying to take photos. These photo related deaths have been on the rise since the popularity of social media boomed in the early 2000’s.
An Oregon college student fell to her death after climbing over a barrier to take pictures from a scenic cliff, the latest in a series of tragedies involving risky photo-taking efforts.
Michelle Casey, 21, and her boyfriend had stopped Sunday along the Oregon coastline to take pictures at a lookout point on Neahkahnie Mountain. Casey climbed over a retaining wall to get a better view and then slipped, the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Office said.
She fell 100 feet before landing in a tree, authorities said.
“Michelle was at her favorite place in the world, the beach,” her parents said in an email to ABC News. “She grew up spending time there and enjoyed taking pictures of the surf and beach and was not a reckless person. Her fall was the result of a slip as she moved from one rock to another. She was not taking a ‘selfie.'”
According to ABC, Casey was a student at Oregon State University in Corvallis, where she was studying kinesiology. She was an avid volleyball player and sang in choirs in both high school and college, her parents said.
Casey was reportedly alive when rescuers airlifted her from the area but later died at the hospital from her injuries.
On her Facebook page, Casey described herself as “a bubbly, friendly and dorky person who loves to make people smile.” Casey’s family told KOIN-TV that she “loved singing in choir and her Starbucks customers as a barista in both Portland and Corvallis.”
CBS noted that Casey was “an organ donor, a decision that saved two lives.” The family thanked the emergency responders who rushed to help her, the doctors at Legacy Emanuel and the transplant team at Pacific Northwest Transplant Bank.