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This is a scary moment a woman loses balance while taking a selfie and falls to death from 27th floor of a high-rise building.

The 27-year-old, Sandra Manuela Da Costa Macedo, went over a balcony railing she was leaning against as she took the snap.

The shocking video footage showed her still holding the selfie stick as she plunged to the ground below.

The woman, initially identified as a Portuguese holidaymaker who had just arrived in Panama although a woman describing herself as a friend later took to social media to say she was a mother-of-two who had gone to the country to work as a teacher, was already dead when they arrived.

Construction workers on a neighboring tower block are said to have yelled at her to get down from the railing she was half-sat on before her death plunge, but strong winds blowing at the time meant she couldn’t hear their warning cries.

Local reports said the incident was still under investigation, but police were focusing on the theory that a gust of wind may have knocked her off balance.

Panama’s Fire Service published a warning on its official Twitter site after the tragedy which said: ‘Don’t risk your life for a selfie. It’s more important to lose a minute in life than your life in a minute.’

A Portuguese friend wrote on Instagram: ‘This woman was a very good friend of mine, a mother of two children. She was a teacher and she was in Panama to work in her chosen profession.

‘She was Portuguese and called Sandra. Let’s pray for her.’

Another replied: ‘It’s sad to see a person like that, so full of life and wanting to look beautiful in a photo but not realizing the place she’s in in danger because of the wind.’

A recent study by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi found 259 people died while attempting to take a selfie between October 2011 and November 2017.

Findings were published in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care.

The study said more than 72 percent of the deaths were men, and drowning was the most common cause of death during a selfie-taking attempt.

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