A 27-year-old woman died on Thursday afternoon after falling roughly 100 feet at the Ravana waterfall in the Kithalella area of Ella, police said.
The woman, named by police only as Valentina, had gone to view the waterfall with another foreign visitor when her foot slipped, Hiru News reported, citing police.
Residents recovered her and took her to hospital, but she had already died, police said. Ella Police are conducting further investigations.
Update: September 29 — identified, and a correction
She has since been identified in Italian and British reporting as Valentina Stragliotto, 27.
This article originally described her as Dutch, following the Sri Lankan police account. That appears to be wrong. Italian national news agency ANSA reported on September 26 that she was Italian, originally from Bassano del Grappa in the province of Vicenza, and several other Italian outlets reported the same. The Bournemouth Echo reported on September 29 that she was an Italian digital marketing consultant who had lived in Brighton for several years.
The age, first name, location and date match the police account exactly, so this is the same person. We have corrected the headline and description, and left the original text above as filed. No Sri Lankan outlet has published a correction, and neither the police nor any embassy has issued a statement on her nationality.
What the later reporting adds
Stragliotto was a Bournemouth University graduate who worked as a senior SEO specialist in Brighton, according to the Echo. She had spoken at the BrightonSEO conference and had set up a coaching project, Aligned & Free, intended to help people build confidence.
She worked as a group travel coordinator for the tour operator WeRoad, but her visit to Sri Lanka is understood to have been a private holiday rather than a trip she was leading.
The later accounts also fill in details the first police report left out: she was taking photographs at the waterfall when she lost her balance on a rock and fell more than 30 metres, and she was taken to Demodara Hospital, where she died.
A note on the naming: the Echo refers to the site as the “Kithal Ella waterfall” and Italian reports as the Ravana waterfall. These are the same location — Ravana Falls sits in the Kithalella area of Ella.
Context
Ravana Falls, on the Wellawaya–Ella road below the town, is one of the most visited waterfalls in the country and sits directly beside the highway, which makes it unusually easy to reach without a guide. The rocks at the base and along the sides are smooth and stay wet year-round, and the current spell of heavy rain across the hill country has raised flows.
Fatal falls at the site are not new. Deaths of foreign visitors at the same waterfall have been reported in previous years, and safety measures at the falls have been raised repeatedly without a permanent barrier being installed along the upper sections.
A note on sourcing: the two outlets added in this update are not on our verified list, and neither is a Sri Lankan newsroom. They are cited because they are the origin of the identification — ANSA is Italy’s national news agency, and the Echo’s report comes via its partnership with USA Today. Both are attributed in the text rather than treated as settled fact.
