Two influencers are dead after refusing to wear lifejackets on a speedboat that sank off the Brazilian coast – because they didn’t want the safety gear to ruin their tan in photos, according to police.
Aline Tamara Moreira de Amorim, 37, and Beatriz Tavares da Silva Faria, 27, ignored pleas to wear their life preservers when an overcrowded boat taking them back to shore from a yacht party capsized in the rough waters of Devil’s Throat along the Iguazu River, according to local reports.
“Some didn’t want to put them on because they were taking selfies,” Sao Vincente Police Commissioner Marcos Alexandra Alfino said, based on testimony by the boat’s captain.
“They said that they get in the way of their tanning.”
The two victims boarded a speedboat to shore with four other influencers after partying on a luxury yacht with friends off the coast of Sao Paulo on Sept. 29, according to local media.
The speedboat captain told police he was ordered to transport the six influencers, despite only having a maximum capacity of five passengers, leaving the dense vessel unable to navigate viscous waves that inundated the boat and threw the passengers into the choppy waters, police said.
The captain told police he tried desperately to save his passengers, but the two victims refused to wear their life vests on the boat, believing it would impact their photos and tans, according to local reports.
Faria’s body was recovered by Brazil’s Maritime Firefighters after it drifted out to sea, police said.
Amorium, whose body was found washed up on the coast of Itaquitanduva Beach a week later, had posted photos to her social media showing her aboard the luxury yacht, moments before she drowned.
“All this is being determined very calmly to conclude if the fatalities were based on recklessness or negligence,” Alfino explained, according to local outlets.
Vanessa Audrey da Silva, one of the five survivors, told the outlets that she put her life vest on in a frenzy and clutched to a rock after the boat descended into the waters.
“There was a moment in the water when no one could see anyone,” she said.
“I was fighting for my life.”