Coast Guard Member Loses Life Tragically At Sea
Kiman Garcia
A Coast Guard member lost his life at sea today – the first fatal incident involving a sailor on the open waters since the Belize Coast Guard was commissioned into service back in 2005. The sailor, twenty-four-year-old Kiman Garcia, was part of a sea patrol that was wrapping up an operation in the Bacalar Chico Reserve when tragedy struck this afternoon. According to Commandant of the Belize Coast Guard, Rear Admiral Elton Bennett, the boat ran over something in the water that sent two soldiers overboard. Garcia was caught in the propeller and lost an arm and suffered severe injuries to his head. As Commandant Bennett shared late this evening with News Five, having to go to one’s family to break this kind of news is not an easy task.
Elton Bennett
Rear Admiral Elton Bennett, Commandant, Belize Coast Guard
“We received the information sometime around 3:00 this evening that a member of the Coast Guard went overboard a vessel. The vessel was moving from Bacalar Chico, that is Northern Ambergris Caye on a routine change-over after duties, towards San Pedro and then they would have been transported on to Belize City. During that movement, the initial information that we received was that the vessel hit some object in the water, causing the cockswain to lose control of the vessel and two persons went overboard. One of those that went overboard suffered severe injury, severed an arm and suffered injuries to his head. We immediately deployed a faster vessel to reach at that location to bring them into San Pedro Town and we handed him over to the San Pedro Polyclinic in order to get assistance to stabilize him, but upon arrival, they declared that he was dead. It’s a very unfortunate situation for us at this time. We’ve never had a casualty of this nature so – a very difficult time.”
Marion Ali
“When you have unfortunate incidents like these, how do you handle it with the family?”
Rear Admiral Elton Bennett
“I am on my way over to speak with the family. We’ve made some calls over to them to inform them of the incident. So we keep the family close. The Coast Guard is a very close family and we have the utmost respect for our sailors’ families so we have a very close interaction as it relates to the follow on actions from here on. There’s a lot that needs to be done in terms of investigation, so we’re working with San Pedro Police to try to get their assistance. A life has been lost. So they will be very much involved with the investigation of that. We will also be reaching out to Port Authority to get an independent eye on the marine casualty to try to determine exactly what transpired.”
