“He loved doing it, always went out there believing he’d be all right. He did what he did for his own pleasure. He did not get any money for it, he was an adventurer.”
Savannah Parker, Stevenson’s girlfriend, said that he slipped from the bridge after fainting.
“He didn’t just fall,” she said. “He lost consciousness because he wasn’t feeling well. His friend who he was with sent me over his police statement.
“He told his friend he wasn’t feeling well and he said: ‘Shall we go back down?’ Lewis said, ‘Give me a minute,’ and that’s when he lost consciousness and slipped.
“I suspect that he hadn’t eaten because he wouldn’t care if he was hungry or thirsty, he’d do something.”
Lewis Stevenson of Derby in England sitting on top of a high-rise building in London in April 2022. Photo / Supplied, Ethan Raddon
Parker, 25, said Stevenson was due to return to Britain on Monday and that the last thing he told her was, “Good night, I love you,” on Saturday night.
She added: “Every time he went away I would tell him to be careful.
“As much as it worries me, I don’t look into things because I worry enough as it is and I just let him do his thing and generally he just comes back. This weekend he didn’t.”
Stevenson’s social media profiles show him on top of skyscrapers in cities around the world, including London and New York.
Lewis Stevenson from Derby in England standing on top of a tall chimney in Riga, Latvia, in March 2022. Photo / Supplied, Ethan Raddon
Macarena Munoz, the local councillor for citizen security, said Stevenson and another 24-year-old British man had “come to Talavera to climb the bridge and create content for social networks, which has resulted in this unfortunate and sad outcome”.
Climbing the bridge is “totally prohibited”, she added.
A spokesman for the national police in Toledo said: “He was about 40 to 50m up, about a quarter of the total height of the bridge, when he fell”.
The other climber, whose identity is not known, survived.
