SEP 4:
What was meant to be a happy occasion quickly turned tragic, after a 32-year-old Japanese man died from falling off a bridge in Okinawa, right after proposing to his girlfriend.
The couple had driven to the island’s famous 3.5km-long Irabu bridge, where the man decided to pop the question around midnight on Sept 4. According to news sites, the man, who works as a caregiver to the elderly, had been drinking prior to the incident and the woman was the one who drove the car.
After the woman said ‘yes’ to his proposal, the ecstatic man allegedly leapt over the 1.2m railing of the bridge to the other side. Unfortunately, he lost his grip and fell off the 30m-high bridge. The girlfriend called the police immediately, but the man’s body was found by rescue divers only seven hours later. This is apparently the first fatality on the Instagram-worthy Irabu bridge, which opened in 2015 and is the longest toll-free bridge in the country. However, instead of reacting with shock and grief like regular folks, some netizens turned detective and cast doubts on the girlfriend’s account of the story.
They questioned if the woman could be trusted, given that she was the only eyewitness at the scene. Said one commenter: “Is it really true what the girl reported? Maybe she refused the marriage proposal and he jumped to his death from the bridge?” And there had to be those with none-too-comforting words to share: “The girl is so unlucky, it should have happened after the marriage so that she would be able to get his insurance payout.”
Asiaone.com