Cruise passengers describe dramatic rescue
You probably saw it on the U.S. television news: the story of a fun loving couple on a Caribbean cruise who somehow managed to fall overboard in the middle of the night but were miraculously rescued after spending four hours in the deep blue sea. Well, today that ship dropped anchor in Belize City Harbour and News 5’s Janelle Chanona set out early in search of the celebrity swimmers.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
When the Grand Princess left Galveston Texas on Saturday afternoon, there were two thousand seven hundred and eighty-three passengers on board. But twelve hours later, that number had decreased by two and the cruise ship’s crew was participating in an intensive search and rescue mission at sea.
Kelly Edge, Grand Princess Passenger
“At three o’clock in the morning we got a wake up call from our captain telling us that we had people overboard and we jumped out on the balcony and we noticed a group of people down below us yelling, “Clarisse! Where are you?” Looking at the water and upset and it was really shocking.”
The female passenger has only been identified as Clarisse, a twenty-year old lifeguard attending a Colorado university. News Five’s sources have named the man as twenty-two year old Ernesto Guzman, a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Speculation is that around one-thirty Sunday morning following a night of partying, Clarisse fell over a ninth story railing. Guzman then jumped in after her. Once alerted, the Captain turned the ship around but the couple would spend the next four hours in the dark, trying to stay afloat in the chilly waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Kelly Edge
“At about six a.m. we hear from the captain, “We think we hear a woman. Please everyone, complete silence”, so we ran out on our balcony again and you could see her and she’s “Help!” and her arms and she’s swimming, she came out of the dark towards one of the rescue boats into the light and she’s swimming and swimming and they threw sort of a loopy thing because the waves were moving. You can’t just pick somebody up out of the water like that, there was a lot, it was very dangerous even that part and they got her to put her body into this loop and they whipped her into the boat and I did speak to one of the rescue workers and they said she was speechless. There was just nothing to say.”
Minutes later, passenger Gill Lecheld watched as rescuers pulled Guzman to safety.
Gill Lecheld, Grand Princess Passenger
“It was kind of scary because I thought for a couple times maybe he was going to go under but that’s just the waves were washing you know. I think the good Lord really looked after those two people you know and that’s basically all I know.”
Janelle Chanona
“Was he waving, yelling?”
Gill Lecheld
“Like this. And he was hollering a little bit. I don’t know what he was hollering because I couldn’t hear because I was right up on the top deck.”
Janelle Chanona
“But he looked like he was going to be okay?”
Gill Lecheld
“Yeah he seemed to be, they took him in and then he went into a foetal position once they got into the tender so everything worked out fine.”
Both passengers were treated for minor injuries and released. Reporting for News Five, I am Janelle Chanona
Clarisse left the ship when it docked in Mexico but Guzman continued with the rest of the cruise. He apparently did not come ashore today in Belize City, however, and is believed to have either stayed on the ship or gone on a fishing or diving tour.
