An elderly cruise passenger has died after she lost control of her mobility scooter and plunged off the pier in the Bahamas. The 88-year-old American tourist fell to her death just before midday on Saturday while the Carnival Celebration cruise liner was docked in the Caribbean archipelago, local newspaper the Nassau Guardian reported.
The ship's crew retrieved her body from the water, but despite resuscitation efforts, she was pronounced dead. Officials believe that the woman struck her head against the hull of the vessel, local media reported. Speaking to local newspaper WSVN, fellow passenger Edward Egersheim said: '[She] went off with the scooter, and banged her head pretty bad.'
The Royal Bahamas Police said they are not probing her death and are treating it as a suspected drowning. A spokesperson for the cruise operator confirmed the woman's death in a statement, saying: 'Carnival confirmed that a female guest using a mobility scooter drove off the pier at Celebration Key and fell into the water while Carnival Celebration was in port on May 9. Carnival teams responded, successfully retrieving her from the water. Despite resuscitation efforts, she did not survive. The deceased was taken by the Royal Bahamian Police Department and the coroner's office. Our thoughts are with her family.'
The tragedy onboard the cruise comes a month after a woman plunged to her death after falling from the balcony of her room onto the deck while on a Carnival cruise. The passenger was on the Carnival Firenze with her family near Catalina Island when the horror ordeal reportedly unfolded. Cruise staff were alerted to the woman's fall by relatives with whom she was travelling at the time.
Separately, an 18-year-old schoolgirl was found dead aboard a Carnival cruise ship sailing from Miami to the Caribbean last year. Anna Kepner had been travelling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November with her father, stepmother, her stepmother's two teenage children and her grandparents. Before the ship was scheduled to return to Florida, Kepner's body was found concealed under a bed in a room she was sharing with two other teens. The cause of death was determined to be mechanical asphyxia, which is when an object or physical force stops someone from breathing.
Last month, her 16-year-old stepbrother, Timothy Hudson, was charged with the murder and aggravated sexual abuse of Kepner. Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10. But the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted last month, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government.
