Teen dies after falling from a balcony on Royal Caribbean ship

[Jason]

A 16-year-old cruise passenger died after falling from Deck 8 of Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas ship on Friday, the Sun Sentinel reported.

Laurent Mercer, who was on vacation with his family, was trying to climb from one balcony to another, according to the Broward Medical Examiner’s Office’s statement to the Sun Sentinel, when he fell onto what appears to be a striped asphalt surface alongside the ship and died.

The 5,400-passenger ship was docked in Labadee, Haiti, the ship’s first stop on a seven-day Western Caribbean sailing from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. The Sun Sentinel reported Mercer was originally from Wallis and Futuna, a French island nation in the Pacific.

“We are saddened by the loss of one our guests in a tragic accident,’’ Owen Torres, manager of communications for Royal Caribbean, said in a statement emailed to the Herald.

People aboard the ship discussed the incident on Cruise Critic, an online forum for cruisers. One passenger shared photos of an area on the pier close to the side of the ship blocked off with barriers.

In a statement to the Sun Sentinel, the Broward Medical Examiner’s Office said the ship’s medical team attempted CPR, but the passenger had suffered head trauma and was declared dead at 11:42 a.m.

Just last month, a crew member on Harmony of the Seas died after going overboard as the ship sailed from Fort Lauderdale to St. Maarten on Christmas Day.

By Taylor Dolven, Miami Herald
Re-posted on CruiseCrazies.com - Cruise News, Articles, Forums, Packing List, Ship Tracker, and more
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[Jan115]

How awful. ? Another article mentioned that the young man may not have had his key card and was trying to access his balcony from an adjacent one (presumably a family member’s cabin), lost his footing and fell. I feel so sad for his family. 

[zebra]

This is so tragic!