Two men have been accused in the rape of a 14-year-old boy in a sauna aboard a Royal Caribbean ship headed for PortMiami.
The men, Ricardo Daniel Mondragon Leal, 37, and Jose Juan Prudencio Diaz, 36, were charged on Friday, March 21.
Mondragon faces charges of sexual battery on a minor, lewd and lascivious molestation on a child aged 12 to 16 years old, lewd and lascivious exhibition on a child under 16 years old by a person over 18 years old.
A Wisconsin man was with his wife on a 35-day Holland America cruise when he suddenly collapsed amid a medical emergency, doctors said he suffered four strokes.
The incident happened on day 10 when Greg Tomensky, 72, was on his way to lunch and keeled over, he told reporters with ABC News. This was the start of an hours-long ordeal in which he would suffer four strokes while the ship was hundreds of miles off the coast of Hawaii. Thankfully Tomensky lived to tell the tale.
“I am very grateful that they got there and what they did,” he recounted.
A cruise passenger in Aruba attempted to board the ship with a firearm and could now faces criminal charges.
The incident happened on Feb. 26 when a Royal Caribbean passenger attempted to board Oasis of the Seas following a stop at the cruise port in Aruba. Security discovered the firearm during a routine security screening conducted when passengers return to the ship.
Local law enforcement took the passenger, whose name has not yet been released by authorities or cruise ship officials, in for questioning.
A video showcasing a passenger testing out a new slide advertised as the “quickest way” to travel eight floors on a cruise ship has gone viral.
The video, which has over 460,000 likes, thousands of comments and has been shared nearly 60,000 times, shows a passenger getting inside a tube-like slide and securing himself in a sack. Once the passenger was loaded up, the tube door closed, and the floor vanished from underneath him.
The man can be heard yelling all the way down, his laughter echoing through the tube. The camera then pans to the side of the ship where the slide curves off the edge, suspended over the pool deck for a moment of adrenaline-spiking danger.
A norovirus outbreak on a cruise ship docked at Port Everglades on Friday left at least 169 people ill, according to reporting from local media.
Holland America Line’s Rotterdam ship was headed to the Caribbean, Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica over a 12-day voyage when it reported the outbreak of norovirus, which causes gastrointestinal illness, to the Centers for Disease Control. There were over 2,600 passengers on board with more than 900 crew. At least 152 passengers and 17 crew members reported being ill during the voyage. Common symptoms of norovirus are vomiting and diarrhea but can also include headaches, muscle pain, cramps and fever.
Holland America officials reported that their crew increased cleaning and disinfection procedures and isolated the infected to mitigate the spread.
Whether injuries take the form of slip and falls on the pool deck or refusal to evacuate amid a medical emergency, Leesfield & Partners is here to help you navigate the waters of cruise line personal injury cases.
Every year, thousands of cruise ship passengers are injured aboard ships for a wide array of reasons. And, every year, thousands of these passengers file personal injury claims against these cruise lines. Most of these claims fall under premises liability, where a cruise line fails to maintain a safe environment for passengers on its ship. However, Leesfield & Partners has extensive experience in this area of personal injury law and has encountered nearly every type of case imaginable. To date, the firm has secured over $40 million for cruise ship passengers injured due to that corporation’s negligence.
Shore Excursion
A new ship with the Cunard Line, a British shipping and cruise line owned by the Carnival Corp., docked in Miami last week, here’s a look inside the new ship on a line who will soon call South Florida home.
Queen Anne, which docked in PortMiami on Jan. 21, is Cunard’s first new ship in over a decade and precedes the South Florida move of Queen Elizabeth, its sister ship. That move is set to take place later this year, according to local media. The ship was docked in South Florida to give travel agents, tourism leaders and media a tour of the massive, 3,000-guest ship.
The ship is currently on a world tour, which began on Jan. 7, according to reporting from The Miami Herald. Locations already checked off the ship’s list include Hamburg, Germany, Mexico and Costa Rica. On Feb. 4, the ship will stop in San Francisco before continuing on to Honolulu.
At least two people and their dog were left stranded, clinging to a buoy in the Tampa Bay over the weekend, officials said in a news release Monday.
The incident happened before 6 p.m. Saturday near Gadsen Point after a cruise ship caused a wake that made their boat crash and sink. Both boaters were injured in the incident and swam to the buoy to wait for help.
U.S. Coast Guard officials as well as deputies from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office found the trio at 6:11 p.m. Both people were taken to a local hospital.
A woman was found unresponsive in the water while on a cruise excursion and a man who died in a cruise line security’s custody, prompting an FBI investigation, are among four of the people who have recently died aboard cruises.
On Dec. 17, a crew member went overboard as the ship he was on was headed back to port in Baltimore, prompting a seven-hour-long search. The man in that incident tragically passed away. He was 23.
A woman died at the hospital after she was found unresponsive in the waters at Blue Lagoon, a popular cruise excursion in Nassau, Bahamas. Additional information, including the extent of her injuries or whether she died from ingesting a substance, were not immediately available Friday morning. The woman’s name has not been released.
A cruise ship worker who was accused of possessing child sex abuse material on his cellphone was found by police at Port Everglades, according to reporting from Channel 10 News.
Koen Leonard Eyck, 35, was charged with transportation and possession of child pornography. Eyck was working on Holland America Line’s Nieuw Statendam and has since been fired, according to reporting from Channel 10. There has been no official confirmation as to what role he fulfilled on board.
When the ship docked in Porty Everglades on Dec. 14, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents searched Eyck’s electronic devices. On it, they found his participation in a WhatsApp group chat dedicated to sharing the child sex abuse material and a $35 electronic payment allegedly used to pay for additional illegal material. When questioned, Eyck admitted to receiving the links for anywhere between five to 10 years.
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