The California social media influencers who fell 800ft to their deaths at Yosemite’s Taft Point in October, were drunk when they died ‘of multiple injuries to the head, neck, chest and abdomen, sustained by a fall from a mountain’.
A toxicology report from Stanislaus County Coroner’s Office revealed Meenakshi Moorthy, 30, and her husband Vishnu Viswanath, 29, were ‘intoxicated with ethyl alcohol prior to death’.
Dr. Sung-Ook Baik, a forensic pathologist confirmed no drugs were present in their bodies, but laboratory tests found the same element used in common alcoholic beverages beer, wine, hard liquor were present.
Meenakshi Moorthy, 30, and Vishnu Viswanath, 29, were intoxicated when they fell over the 800-foot drop in California last October, a toxicology report found
The autopsy found they died ‘of multiple injuries to the head, neck, chest and abdomen, sustained by a fall from a mountain’. An unidentified couple got married there last September
Last shot: Drea Rose Laguillo and her fiance Sean Matteson were at Taft Point in Yosemite National Park when they snapped a selfie just after 5pm (above)
‘We can only conclude that they had consumed alcohol but it is unknown to what level of intoxication,’ assistant Mariposa County coroner, Andrea Stewart, told Mercury News in an email on Friday.
The autopsy on the Holidays and Happily Ever Afters Instagram duo was completed January 4.
However the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office stated it’s still unclear how exactly the pair with a following of more than 25,000 fell to their deaths of the steep cliff.
The month before a couple had been pictured getting married at the same point.
‘Any deaths that happen inside the park, the National Park Service rangers do the investigation of the accident itself,’ spokeswoman Kristie Mitchell said. ‘As far as what led up to it, that’s done by the National Park Service.’
Many staff from the park are absent due to the partial government shutdown.
Pictured: Meenakshi Moorthy (above), whose body was discovered after the plunge
The woman who fatally fell with her husband at Yosemite used her social media accounts to talk about her severe ‘tentacles of depression’ and mental health issues.
In a post from April, Moorthy apologized to readers for going silent and ‘disappearing for more than a year.’
‘Between battling the tightening tentacles of depression and blustering in the tempest of moving madness, I am afraid social media is taking a back seat??’ she wrote.
In a May Instagram post, Moorthy shared her mental health woes and shared that she had been ‘buried in a blanket for weeks’, ‘hurting in a whirl of hopeless dark thoughts.’
She added that she was ‘paralyzed with anxiety’, questioning whether her existence was ‘helping my loved ones or harming’ and said ‘no one can figure out what is wrong with me.’
Moorthy and her husband, who were Indian expats living in California, fell to their deaths in Yosemite National Park while taking a selfie, the man’s brother said.
Moorthy described her and her husband as ‘travel obsessed’ on their blog, ‘Holidays & Happily Ever Afters,’ which was taken down Tuesday. It was filled with photos of the couple in front of snowy peaks and on romantic trips across Europe, where they took selfies from a gondola in Venice, at the Leaning Tower of Pisa and at the Vatican.
Tragic fall: Laguillo shared the photo and DailyMail.com’s story (above) about the tragedy, revealing that she could estimate the time of death to be around 5.11pm
Moorthy wanted to work full time as a travel blogger, her brother-in-law said. She described herself in the blog as a ‘quirky free spirit’ and ‘an ardent adrenaline junkie – roller coasters and skydiving does not scare me.’
She posed at the edge of the Grand Canyon wearing a Wonder Woman costume, writing, ‘A lot of us including yours truly is a fan of daredevilry attempts of standing at the edge of cliffs – and skyscrapers. But did you know that wind gust can be FATAL??? Is our life just worth one photo?’.
Her husband’s Facebook cover photo shows the couple smiling, with arms around each other standing at a Grand Canyon precipice. ‘Living life on the edge,’ he wrote.
In a post from July 2017, the couple celebrated their wedding anniversary by skydiving in Santa Barbara, California. Moorthy posted a video on Instagram that shows her in a T-shirt saying, ‘Gimme Danger,’ and flashing a thumbs-up as she jumps from the plane.
Meenakshi Moorthy (left) blogged about depression and spoke about mental health on her social media accounts
‘I believe I can flyyy. I believe i can touch the skyyy,’ she wrote in the post. ‘Aaaand touch the sky I did from an effin’ 18000 feet thanks to the unconditional love-ninja in my life, Vishnu, who literally took this year’s anniversary surprise a notch ‘higher’ than last year’s hot air ballooning adventure, by gifting this adrenaline junkie with one of the highest tandem skydives in the world!’.
The deaths of the couple have been clouded in mystery but at least one pressing question was answered thanks to a selfie snapped by another pair.
Drea Rose Laguillo and her fiance Sean Matteson were at Taft Point on Sunday just after 5pm and realized they may have taken the final photo of the pair.
Big apple: Moorthy, 30, and Visanath, 29, were married engineering students studying in the US who also had a travel blog
On the move: The engineering students had traveled to This year alone they had traveled to Vermont, Arizona, New Mexico, San Francisco, New Orleans, Brooklyn, Big Sur, Baltimore, Manhattan, Holland and India
Laguillo posted the DailyMail.com story about the couple’s tragic death to her Facebook page on Monday and revealed that she had a rough idea of when the pair likely went over the edge of the 800-foot cliff because she unknowingly captured one of them in her photo.
It was an image taken at 5.11pm that clearly shows the pink-haired Moorthy in the background of their photo at Taft Point.
That photo made it very clear that Moorthy and Viswanath were perilously close to the edge of the drop where there were no guards or rails to protect visitors.
Viswanath’s brother, Jishnu Viswanath, told the Associated Press that they had set up their tripod near the ledge when they plummeted to their deaths.
Park visitors the next morning saw the camera and alerted rangers, who ‘used high-powered binoculars to find them and used helicopters to airlift the bodies,’ he said.
The funeral took place in the U.S. since the bodies were not in a condition to be flown back to India, Jishnu Viswanath said.