Posted on 05/17/2006 8:24:01 PM PDT by beezdotcom
MIAMI
A passenger reported missing on a cruise to the Bahamas fell overboard after a night of heavy drinking with friends, authorities said Wednesday as Coast Guard crews suspended their search for the man.
Friends of Daniel DiPiero, 21, of Canfield, Ohio, last saw him on the Mariner of the Seas around midnight Sunday, Petty Officer Dana Warr said.
About two hours later, shipboard security cameras show DiPiero falling overboard from a rail near the front of the ship, investigators said.
He was reported missing Monday morning when his friends realized he had not slept in the cabin they shared. Royal Caribbean International notified the Coast Guard after searching the ship and Coco Cay, an island owned by the cruise line.
Vessels and aircraft from the U.S. and Bahamian Coast Guards searched 900 square miles of ocean between Grand Bahama Island and Coco Cay. The ship had departed from Port Canaveral.
Investigators from the FBI and the Coast Guard interviewed DiPiero's companions, other travelers and crew members Wednesday aboard the ship, the company said.
They found that DiPiero and his friends concealed liquor in mouthwash bottles and brought a bottle of rum in their luggage. The friends videotaped themselves drinking the alcohol Sunday afternoon, and DiPiero continued drinking until midnight, investigators said.
"Our thoughts and prayers remain with the young man's family and friends during this difficult time," company spokesman Michael Sheehan said.
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Natural selection at work.
All kidding aside, this is really sad. Too much time elapsed before anyone noticed him missing, and I fear he will never be rescued alive or recovered. If a security camera picked that up, wasn't it being monitored?
On a recent trip to Mexico I witnessed the disembarking of several cruise ships at a destination port while I waited for a ferry. There were a lot of college kids coming off the ships completely s**tfaced drunk, some of them holding Listerine bottles that didn't contain Listerine. The cruise ships obviously didn't care.
We hear stories of drunk college kids at spring break falling off hotel balconies in Florida, let alone a cruise ship.
He sleeps with the fishes.
good question, what's the point of taking this long unless they released the 'edited version'.
Why are they drinking out of mouthwash bottles? Is alcohol not allowed on cruise ships?
Which means he scraped along the length of the hull and possibly went through the screws. Chum is the word that comes to mind.
Hometown ping
Alcohol flows like water aboard cruise ships, but it is also expensive.
Another Darwin award winner...
Ohhh, too much info. Sorry for this, but a Darwin award nominee.
Dumb dumb dumb dumb duuuuuumb!
DiPiero?
With a name like that he couldnt be from Ytown ;)
Monarch Of The Seas
Ship Stats
| Launched: 2003 Passengers: 3,114 Registry: Bahamas |
Tonnage: 138,000 Crew: 1,185 Decks: 15 |
Security cameras are also usually about web cam resolution and frame rate, often black and white, in order to save on storage space and allow for a longer loop (like a black box). They are post event diagnostic tools, generally not advance warning devices.
Of course, now somone is going to sue and demand that they put labels on cruise ship railings saying "don't sit and hang out over empty space 15 stories up over the open ocean when you are plastered on smuggled illegal booze." Then they'll sue the mouthwash company to force them to put on a warning label "do not use to smuggle booze."
The cruise ships want to make money off their own liquor, it's not a safety thing. IT's a money thing.
I've been on that ship before. It's a long drop to the water from the rail at the front. The impact with the water would have either killed him or knocked him out anyway. Even if it didn't and he somehow survived......how long do you think he could have survived in his drunken condition? Not more than a couple of minutes.
It would be very difficult to fall off of a ship, stone-sober. during the daylight hours and survive. Being dead-drunk and overboard in the pitch-black nighttime ocean has got to be horrific. If the fall didn't kill him, the shock of what happened - and his blood alcohol level - would have. How terribly sad.
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