[imagesource: Meghan McCarthy / USA Today Network]

A woman was walking across a drawbridge in West Palm Beach, Florida, with her bike on Sunday, when it suddenly started opening before she could get to the other side.

As the bridge was opening, she was about 10 feet (three metres) away from the end of the bridge when she fell six storeys through a gap in the road and died.

West Palm Beach Police spokesman Mike Jachles, via CNN, said that she was walking her bicycle on the sidewalk of the Royal Park Bridge, connecting West Palm Beach to Palm Beach, just after 1PM that tragic day.

She was so close to making it across, with one bystander on a skateboard even attempting to grab her before she fell.

She is reported to have been holding on to the railing at that point before losing grip and falling onto a concrete landing, Jachles said.

Image: Meghan McCarthy / The Palm Beach Post / AP

Authorities in the area are investigating the death of the woman, who has yet to be identified.

She had no form of identification on her but is described as an older woman, possibly a resident of West Palm Beach.

The investigation is also set to determine how the bridge opened before it was cleared of all pedestrians:

“There are warning signs and there are safety procedures in place for the bridge tenders to follow, with multiple steps and multiple layers of checking to make sure that there are no cars or people on the bridge when it goes up,” Jachles told CNN affiliate WPBF.

“So that’s all part of the investigation, to determine whether [safety] procedure was followed or whether this woman crossed after the signals were down,” he said.

As a result of the death, the bridge was shut down for nearly six hours on Sunday.

[source:cnn]