Professor Ross Klein’s website CruiseJunkie contains disturbing comments from a cruise passenger aboard the Carnival Splendor cruise ship who reports that on December 15th during a sailing to the Mexican Riviera a gruesome physical altercation took place in cabin 1306.
Here are the comments:
“Wild, out-of-control alcohol-fueled domestic fight – starts at 9PM, escalates to most certainly a felony assault (or worse) by 3AM. All kinds of yelling, screaming, howling. Objects (victim?) thrown against the walls. Finally security responds; victim has blood streaming from her, multiple wounds; others report seeing multiple pools of blood in the room. Around 3:45 AM, Carnival removes the ‘guests’ and immediately starts the process of cleaning the room up, starting with the blood.
NO attempt whatsoever to preserve the scene or the evidence. Staff members will not discuss what happened other than ‘it’s under control’ and ‘he won’t be a problem.’ Rumor is that the offender was removed from the ship in Puerto Vallarta.”
We reached out to Carnival’s PR department yesterday who said they would check it out, but no response so far.
It’s disturbing to read an account like this particularly after we just reported that a drunken Carnival passenger who beat and strangled his wife to death was sentenced to life in prison. And should there be any doubt that cruise lines destroy crime scene evidence?
The following is a comment from a passenger on board the Splendor at the time of the incident…
I was across the hall from this room and was there during the incident. I was scared to death and watched everything that was visible through my cabin peephole across the hall. At about 10:30pm, a drunk man was yelling that his girlfriend locked him out of their room. Eventually, she let him in and it quieted down. Around 1:40am, I was woken by loud yelling and screaming. I think it had been going on for some time, but I was across the hall and it didn’t wake me right away. When it did, I ran to the door and watched through the peephole after calling security. The yelling continued and a woman opened the cabin door holding her hands with blood EVERYWHERE. Security came quickly and took her to medical in a wheelchair. They stayed with the man, who showered and got cleaned up. There were no cuffs or anything and after a couple hours the man walked away with security. At this time, the cleaning crew came and was cleaining the room and all the blood on the walls in the hallway and the carpets. They had to wet vac the carpets. I watched them take about 4 large biohazard bags away from the room. The cleaning and scrubbing of carpets went on until morning. The woman was later escorted back to the room and it appeared that she was collecting her belongings. The next day (after porting in Puerto Vallerta), the cleaning crew came back at 8:30pm to scrub walls and carpets again, this time using a UV light to find further organic/blood material. I did not see the man or woman return again to this cabin, but I was pretty upset because we had two young children with us. I went to Guest Services to see if the couple would be returning and if I needed to be worried, but Guest Services just said “It’s under control” and that they would not be allowed to be together. They indicated that the man and woman would be in separate rooms and not allowed contact for the remainder of the cruise. When this did not satisfy my, the Guest Service rep asked his boss and we were then told that Carnival had not determined what exactly would be done, but that they might remove them at Puerto Vallerta. That was the last I heard about this and no other incidents happened, but this sure made me think twice about cruising again.
-Anna
December 21, 2011 Update: This article was picked up by the popular Cruise Critic online community and posted in a thread on the message board. How did the concerned Cruise Critic cruise fans react to the bloody crime scene and Carnival’s spoliation of evidence?
Read their comments like “Doesn’t affect me . . . Who cares . . . Ship happens” which you can read here. Unfortunately, this type of complacency perpetuates the sorry state of affairs on cruise ships where cruise lines destroy evidence knowing that their fan base doesn’t care.
We will keep you updated on this developing story.
This story is provided by Cruise Law News.
