DULUTH, GA -- A second death at Settles Bridge this summer didn't deter additional thrill seekers less than a day later.
A 21-year-old man who jumped from the bridge into the Chattahoochee River died. In late July, 17-year-old Perez Tamfu also died following a jump.
The word has gotten out about its dangers.
Yet when we arrived at the bridge midday Thursday, we spotted a 21-year-old Emory student on the bridge with a selfie stick. She wouldn't give us her last name.
She and two friends were tightrope walking the old steel structure, an abandoned bridge that juts across the Chattahoochee near Settles Bridge Park—with the intent of jumping from the three-story tall structure into about 15 feet of water.
Halsey jumped successfully and quickly bobbed to the surface. "We heard that someone died yesterday. But we read that he got caught in the current. So we went and bought a bunch of life preservers today," she said. She was wearing a life jacket during the jump.
The bridge, abandoned more than a half century ago, is now in a tangle of government jurisdictions -- Forsyth County on the far side, where we spotted another man climbing the span. The National Park Service claims jurisdiction along the shoreline.
Earlier this month, the DOT said it had abandoned the bridge in the 1950s. A spokeswoman told 11Alive News that a fresh search of records now indicates Settles Bridge was never a state bridge.
Halsey talked to us in Gwinnett County. Moments after she successfully jumped, a Gwinnett police officer on patrol caught two of Halsey’s friends in the act of retreating from the bridge. He warned them not to do it again and wrote no citation.
Although Gwinnett PD’s presence was obvious, it’s still not clear which jurisdiction is responsible for the decaying structure and its illicit accessibility. County officials say the structure is the property of the state, and that the shoreline is the property of the federal government.
A National Park Service spokesman said he was researching the jurisdictional issue.
Speaking before the police officer showed up, Halsey said the jump was "fun."
"The climbing was really scary because this is like not very stable. That structure is not very stable at all. It’s really rusted. So that was kind of scary. But actually jumping was not that scary." she said, adding that she would do it again.
