Teen who dreamed of competing in bull riding in the US died of heart attack after falling off a bull during a rodeo in Brazil

A teenager who had dreams of becoming a bull rider and competing in the United States died from a heart attack after falling off a bull at a rodeo in southeastern Brazilian state of São Paulo.

Thiago Castilho, 18, was participating at an event in the São Paulo city of Ribeirão Preto on Thursday night when he suffered the fall.

Multiple videos surfaced online that show Perez mounted on the bull for nearly eight seconds as the animal was trying to buck him off.

The teen ultimately lost his grip on the bull rope and appeared to hit his neck on the bull's horn as he was falling to the ground.

Two men rushed to his side as he was lying on the ground unconscious while another individual chased down the bull.

Castilho was rushed to a local medical facility and went into cardiac arrest early Friday morning.

The incident is being investigated by the Ribeirão Preto Civil Police as a suspicious and accidental death.

Jean Carlos Castilho told Brazilian news outlet G1 that his son was only 11 years old when he started riding horses and by the age of 16 was riding an ox.

As soon as he turned 18 in February, Thiago Castilho began participating in bigger rodeo shows that were held in several São Paulo municipalities, including his hometown of Brodowski

LOL, I have watched that dozens of times, but didn’t pick up that bull whacking the gate the second time, I thought it was the natural reflexive rebound of the gate!

Man, that is one mean bull. The white face makes it look extra mean, like an ill-tempered white-faced hornet!

I didn’t grow up around farm animals but everyone knows you don’t expose yourself to, or get near a bull.

I didn’t understand that the way someone who has seen a lot of them does, but I saw enough references to know that, if you were ever in the sight line of an unrestrained bull, you better have a safe haven.

It is the testosterone. Naturally produced steroids.

I read one of the books by the famous veterinarian author James Herriot who was a Scottish vet working in England back in the Thirties, and in it, he talks about a farm that had a bull calf. He said that calf loved him.

When he visited the farm, the calf would see him coming, and run, gamboling across the field in joy, they were the best of friends.

He didn’t get called back to the farm for some time, and he got a call to go out to put a ring in the nose of a bull who had come of age and was no longer a calf. When he got there, it was his friend, the calf, but he wasn’t a calf anymore, and he certainly wasn’t his friend, either.

As he examined this enormous bull, rippling with mature muscles, he peered in at the eyes. The friendly, laughing calf-eyes were gone. In its place were smoldering eyes looking directly at him with a murderous malignancy! When the testosterone kicked in, it changed that bull’s body, and twisted it’s mind into something that just wanted to aggressively attack and smash everything!

I thought long about that primitive, smoldering powder keg of animal muscle fed by natural steroids described in that biography, and it gave me an idea why bulls are so dangerous.

A few years ago my wife and I stayed at a dairy farm in Vermont that was a working farm/bed and breakfast. They had perhaps 200 cows, and you could help with the daily tasks of the farm (my wife enjoyed feeding the calves from a big milk bottle) or...you could just sit on the porch and watch. In the evening, you would have communal meals at the big farm table with up to three other families staying there, and I will say, that food was good but damned heavy and dense.

Anyway, it began to rain, and kept up for a few days. One day, it was torrential, and I was bored. (There was no Internet access or television)

I had my raingear with me, and asked if I could explore the property, and the farmer said sure, go anywhere you want...he suggested if I was interested, to take a look at their prize bull.

So, it was pouring rain and all mud, so I put on my rain gear and walked down to where there was a structure with dozens of cows milling about. They stopped and regarded me, gazing with their uninterested look as they chewed, but sure enough, there was the bull, his head sticking FAR up above the backs of the cows.

His head had to be sticking out a good three feet above the cows all around him, and initially all I saw was his silhouette against the open sky behind him as he stood in this huge open-sided structure. Then as my eyes adjusted, I could see details of his face, and his eyes.

And he had is eyes on me.

It wasn’t the dull, bored, disinterested look of the cows, it was a laser-focus, hostile look that made me feel distinctly uncomfortable.

And it didn’t waver during the fifteen minutes I was poking around. I haven’t spent much time around livestock, but I would wager that bull was somewhere between 1000-1500 lbs. And it was all muscle.

As I walked around, I could FEEL the damn thing looking at me, and when I turned around...it sure was. At one point, it put its front legs on top of some structure in the pen, and with an immediate feeling of danger, I thought “Jesus Christ. That thing can get out of there!” Then it went over to the gate and began pounding its head against the gate, and I thought “If that thing were to get out, I would be a grease spot.”

I decided I had enough sightseeing and left.

That was extremely intimidating.

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