Russian 'parkour' girl, 24, falls 17 storeys to her death after building jump goes horribly wrong

Woman was on the roof of building with her older sister, and four men who were experienced in the sport



When she tried to copy men she misjudged the gap



A 24-year-old plunged 17 storeys to her death during her first parkour lesson.



The accident happened when she was trying out the sport which requires participants to jump, climb and roll across buildings.



St Petersburg police said the woman, went up to the roof of the building with her older sister, along with four local men, who were apparently experienced in the craze.

Sport: A parkour practitioner jumps from an 18-metres high roof to 14-metres high roof across a 7-meters wide gap in St. Petersburg, Russia

DANGERS OF PARKOUR

Authorities have raised concerns about the risk in jumping across high buildings and argue that practitioners are needlessly risking damage to both themselves and rooftops.

Some police forces are calling for practitioners to stay off the rooftops. But many practitioners of Parkour, known as 'traceurs' insist the non-competitive sport is not dangerous as long as it's practiced properly and safety procedures are put in place.

There have been several deaths across the world which are understood to have been related to the sport, but it can be difficult for authorities to determine whether they are suicide attempts.

It is unclear how many people are injured during the sport - Lanier Johnson, executive director of the American Sports Medicine Institute, says that many of the injuries are not reported.



The men demonstrated their parkour skills, jumping from the roof to the protruding eaves.



When they asked the two women to try it out, the older sister refused, but the younger woman accepted the challenge.

She ran, jumped and missed the opposite building, falling 17 storeys to her death.

The men then fled the scene.



It happened at apartment building No. 8 on Martynovskaya Street.



It is unclear why the girl did not start the lesson from a smaller height as most parkour practitioners would suggest.



A similar incident took place in Russia's Krasnodar in 2010.



A young teenager was trying to cross a gap when he fell down from the fourth storey of a building which was under construction and died.

There have also been cases of other young people who have died while attempting to jump from risky heights.

Film fame: The parkour James Bond chase sequence in Casino Royale is billed as one of the most ambitious in the history of the action series

Parkour is a mixture of acrobatics and athletics and was founded by David Belle in France in the early 1990s.



It has became popular throughout the world after film director Luc Besson made District B13, featuring the trend.

The James Bond parkour chase sequence in Casino Royale is billed as one of the most ambitious in the history of the action series.



Last week a dangerous stunt video emerged of a Russian teenager grabbing a live electrical cable on a train.



After spreading across the internet, it was deemed so dangerous the clip has now been removed from video hosting websites.