Number 8 Liu Youling
In September of 2017, a Chinese cosplay model suffered a fatal accident during a photoshoot
on the Northern Mariana Island of Saipan. “Jovie” Liu Youling, aged 25, had amassed a considerable
following on her Weibo account by donning costumes inspired by videogame, historical
and fantasy characters. The young woman was also a renowned freelance photographer in Hangzhou,
in China’s east, and would often be contacted for shoots by other models or cosplayers.
A photography company had put together an event asking Internet users to crowdfund their favorite
model for a Japanese-themed session and Liu had won. On September the 25th, during the shoot
at the Sea Fun Villa, Liu and two others fell into a deeper area of the hotel’s pool.
None of them were reportedly able to swim but, while the others drifted to safety
into a shallow area, Liu ended up in a section that was about 10 feet-deep. She spent two to
three minutes underwater before hotel staff pulled her out. That afternoon, Liu was taken to the
Commonwealth Healthcare Corporation in a comatose state. The following day she was pronounced dead
due to a lack of oxygen to the brain. Number 7 Chandru and Shashikala
A young Indian couple drowned during a pre-wedding photoshoot on the Cauvery River,
in November of 2020. Chandru and Shashikala, aged 28 and 20 respectively, had scheduled their
wedding to take place on November the 22nd. They wanted to mark the event by taking some
professional photos beforehand and, for the shoot, they were both on a coracle that had moved roughly
100 feet from the riverbank, near Talakadu. Family members were on the shore, including
Shashikala’s brother who was reportedly asking her and Chandru to strike various poses. At some
point, the woman lost her balance on the small boat, allegedly due to her high-heeled slippers.
The coracle capsized and the couple fell in the river’s fast-flowing waters. They were unable
to stay afloat and their bodies were recovered by professional swimmers, roughly three hours later.
Number 6 Denis Ricardo Faria Gurgel The day before he was due to get married,
in late July of 2021, a Brazilian doctor suffered a fatal accident during a photoshoot. 31-year-old
Denis Ricardo Faria Gurgel and his fiancée, Kamila Godoi, were in a session with a
professional photographer on the banks of a reservoir, in a rural area of the Cariri do
Tocantins municipality. The couple was posing with fishing rods but, as they cast them, one of hooks
got caught in a high-voltage power line. Gurgel went to retrieve it and sustained a
massive electric shock as he put both his hands on the cable. It was later revealed
that the plastic coating on some parts of the cable had come away, exposing the line
beneath. Firefighters and ambulance services were called to the scene but, unfortunately,
Gurgel was beyond saving. Number 5 Chloe Ayling
In 2017, British glamour model Chloe Ayling was working for the London-based Supermodel Agency,
operated by Phil Green. In July, a man named Andre Lazio contacted Green and requested a shoot with
20-year-old Ayling, in Milan. The model travelled to Italy but didn’t return to the UK, as expected.
Green would later receive a ransom email from someone named “MD”, claiming to be working for
The Black Death, an Eastern European criminal organization connected to human trafficking.
MD asked that Green pay €300,000 or else Ayling would be auctioned off as a slave on the dark web,
on July the 16th. It would later emerge that MD and Andre Lazio were both aliases of Lukasz Herba,
a 30-year-old computer programmer from Oldbury, England. Upon receiving the ransom email,
Green contacted the UK consulate in Milan for assistance. Police descended on the
address to which Ayling had travelled and found some of the model’s clothes,
but no trace of her. The investigation stalled until six days later, when Herba and Ayling turned
up together at the Milan consulate. The woman was safely taken back to the UK but her abduction
would be marked by controversy in the period that followed. Ayling reported that the photoshoot had
been fabricated to lure her to the address, where she was forcefully injected with the tranquilizer
ketamine, an aspect confirmed by the physical evidence of needle marks and drug traces on her
body. Images of her in a leotard and seemingly drugged-up on the floor, constituting an alleged
dark web post, were subsequently widely circulated in the media. Ayling was then stuffed into a gym
bag and taken to a house in the commune of Viù, where she was initially chained to furniture.
Aspersions were cast on her version of events as CCTV footage emerged of her and Herba holding
hands, eating and shopping together in the Italian village. The pair had also reportedly met before,
while Ayling was in Paris on a modeling job. She claimed that, while Herba hadn’t forced himself
on her, he’d manipulated his alias and the threat of The Black Death to brainwash her into thinking
she couldn’t escape and to make her comply with his demands. He reportedly developed feelings
for the model and released her upon learning she was a mother. At his trial, Herba would claim to
be in love with Ayling but also stated that she’d been a willing participant in the abduction plot,
allegedly concocted to boost her career. While some in the public and media suspected it had been
publicity stunt, Ayling’s story was partially vindicated when Herba and his brother Michal,
revealed as an accomplice, were each sentenced to 16 years in prison by an Italian court.
Number 4 Jessica Leidolph In August of 2021, a model’s face was
sliced open by a leopard during a photoshoot in Germany. 36-year-old Jessica Leidolph
had travelled to a compound, in the town of Nebra, which was a home for retired show animals.
It was there that she entered the enclosure of a 16-year-old leopard named Troja. Leidolph,
an animal rights activist, was to model for the shoot which would’ve resulted in a fundraising
calendar for unwanted animals. She’d been given a security briefing by the owner and Troja was on a
double lead. In spite of the precautions, moments after a photo had been snapped and as Leidolph was
sitting on a tree trunk, she felt a powerful blow in her back. The model had been charged by Troja,
who then repeatedly bit her head and body, inflicting horrific injuries. Leidolph,
who was eventually pulled from the leopard’s jaws, lost consciousness and awoke as she was being
airlifted to a hospital. She spent two weeks in a clinic and had three metal plates inserted into
the right side of her face to mend her wounds. Leading up to the incident, for roughly 16 years,
Leidolph had been nursing sick and orphaned animals, including owls, swans, foxes and
hedgehogs, at her home in the town of Eisenberg. She directed the money earned from modeling for
calendars towards helping them find a home. Even though the leopard attack had left her disfigured
she didn’t want Troja harmed nor did she blame the facility’s operator but an investigation was,
nevertheless, launched into the incident. Number 3 Mahmoud Nakib’s Photoshoot
On August the 4th of 2020, professional photographer Mahmoud Nakib was in a square,
in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, taking photos and a video of newlywed Israa Seblani. The clip, which
was widely circulated online in the aftermath, began with Seblani standing and smiling in her
wedding dress. As Nakib lowered the camera to capture her train a powerful shockwave struck the
bride. The photographer then captured the square, which had been blanketed by smoke, dust and
debris. As it would later emerge, the post-wedding photoshoot had been interrupted by the shockwave
from one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosions in human history. 2,750 tons of
improperly-stored ammonium nitrate had exploded at the Port of Beirut, under circumstances that
are still being investigated. The catastrophic blast, equivalent to around 1.1 kilotons of TNT,
was felt in Turkey, Syria, Israel as well as some parts of Europe and heard on the island of Cyprus,
roughly 150 miles away. It resulted in at least 218 deaths, thousands of injuries and billions
of dollars in property damage. Seblani and her husband weren’t hurt but their photoshoot would
forever be associated with one of the worst tragedies in the capital city’s history.
Today's topic was requested Instagram follower sinclair7_. If you have any other topics you’d
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Instagram and reach out to us there. Number 2 Victoria Keup Schafer
In 2020, two Ohio boys in their late teens were sentenced to three years in a youth detention
facility after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter. Jordan Buckley and Jaden Churchheus
were initially to be tried as adults but they entered plea arrangements that placed their cases
back into juvenile court. The charges against them stemmed from an incident that had occurred
in early September of the previous year. 44-year-old photographer Victoria Keup Schafer was
conducting a photoshoot with several high school seniors on the steps of Old Man’s Cave, a popular
spot in Hocking Hills State Park, in Logan. As Schafer was taking portraits of the seniors,
Buckley and Churchheus pushed a log, weighing an estimated 75 pounds, from a cliff above. The pair
had done it “to be funny” but the massive tree limb landed directly on top of the photographer,
inflicting catastrophic injuries. The woman’s spine was broken in two places, her chest was
crushed and she suffered six broken ribs in addition to a massive 12-inch gash atop her
head. The mother-of-four died on the spot. Some of the teens that had witnessed her brutal demise
were reported as traumatized in the aftermath. The woman’s husband ultimately agreed to a plea deal
for Buckley and Churchheus, believing that his wife would’ve wanted them to have a second chance.
Number 1 Linda Sobek
The buried remains of 27-year-old Linda Sobek were discovered in November of 1995, roughly eight days
after she’d been reported missing. Leading the authorities to her remains, in Angeles National
Forest, about 25 miles from LA, was photographer Charles Rathbun, aged 38. Sobek had been a
cheerleader for the Los Angeles Raiders before starting a career in modeling and acting. She’d
vanished after heading for a daytime photoshoot for an automobile magazine with Rathbun,
a man with whom she’d worked before. After Sobek had gone missing, the case rapidly captured the
media and the nation’s attention, as did the revelations that followed. Rathbun eventually
confessed that he’d had “something to do” with Sobek’s disappearance. He led the authorities to
where she’d been buried and then stated that he’d killed her by accident while showing off in a 1996
Lexus SUV on a dry lake bed. Rathbun claimed to have accidentally struck her with the vehicle
while doing doughnuts. By his claims, he then panicked and buried her body in the forest.
The victim’s autopsy, however, seemingly contradicted the photographer’s version
of events. She’d been killed via asphyxia, likely by someone standing on her back and
pushing her throat against something that cut off her air supply. Her ankles had been rubbed
almost raw, indicating intense struggle. Even though she wasn’t a frequent drinker,
Sobek was heavily intoxicated at the time and Rathbun would later admit that he’d bet her
$60 that she couldn’t chug the remnants of a tequila bottle. Prior to Sobek’s death,
her privates had been brutally assaulted with a foreign object, possibly a handgun. Faced with the
evidence, Rathbun changed his story and claimed that he’d almost clipped her with the Lexus,
causing her to fall and become furious with him. An argument and then a struggle supposedly ensued
inside the vehicle that led to the photographer accidentally and fatally pressing down on Sobek’s
neck. The prosecution’s contextualization of the killing was the one that eventually prevailed.
They proposed that Rathbun, whom other models had accused of making advances towards them,
had lured Sobek to the shoot with the intention of doing the same. He then killed her when she fought
back and tried to cover his tracks before he was eventually overcome by guilt. The photographer
was ultimately sentenced to life in prison. Thanks for watching! Would you rather that
only your most unflattering photos were posted online OR have a video from your
bedroom randomly uploaded online once a month? Let us know in the comments section below!