An 18-month-old girl has died after apparently slipping from her grandfather’s grasp and plummeting 11 storeys on a cruise ship.
The toddler is believed to have fallen 150ft from the 11th floor of the Freedom of the Seas onto concrete decking below as the ship was docked in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Sunday.
Reports vary as to whether the child was being playfully dangled out of a window or if she fell after her grandfather slipped.
Local website Primera Hora said the little girl was on a family holiday with her parents, younger brother and grandparents when the tragedy happened.
It adds the distraught family, who are from Indiana, are receiving “medical and spiritual assistance.”
A fellow passenger on the Royal Caribbean vessel told Telemundo PR they had heard the child’s mother screaming: “That cry of pain does not compare with anything.”
Police are in the process of accessing footage from CCTV cameras and interviewing passengers on board the cruise ship as they investigate the child’s death.
A spokesman for Royal Caribbean told HuffPost UK: “We are deeply saddened by yesterday’s tragic incident, and our hearts go out to the family. We’ve made our Care Team available to assist the family with any resources they need. Out of respect for their privacy, we do not plan to comment further on the incident.”
According to Cruise Law News, in 2012 a 14-month-old toddler was injured when they fell from deck 12 to deck 11 on the Monarch of the Seas.