Multiple news outlets report that, a 16 year old boy fell to his death while trying to access his eighth floor stateroom from the balcony of an adjacent room.
The accident occurred Jan. 11 aboard Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas.
Reports say Laurent Mercer, the victim, did not have his room card when trying to access his balcony from an adjacent one. Mercer lost his footing and fell onto the pier, according to a statement from the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The ship, on a seven-day Caribbean trip, was docked at Labadee, Haiti when the accident happened. Royal Caribbean owns a private resort there for its cruise vacationers.
“The ship’s medical team responded to the pier and attempted CPR, but the (boy) had sustained major head trauma and he was pronounced dead,” read a statement from the Office of the Medical Examiner & Trauma Services of Broward County to the Sun-Sentinel.
Per a Yahoo.com article, a passenger named Jaclyn Syroney reportedly wrote on Facebook, “I was on the cruise and saw him hit the concrete dock. It was around 11:30 a.m. The workers were amazingly fast acting and tried to keep him alive, but I’m pretty sure he was dead on impact. [They] were also fast acting [in] removing his body and covering up the area so people wouldn’t see it. Royal Caribbean handled this situation with utmost respect for the passenger and the family.”