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A video on social media captured the moment an excursion boat capsized in the Bahamas, leaving one American tourist dead.
The 74-year-old woman from Broomfield, Colorado, was on a five-day vacation with her family when a double-deck catamaran carrying over 100 people sank late Tuesday morning, the Associated Press reported. The rest of the passengers and crew members were rescued, including two people who were taken to a medical facility. Their current conditions are unknown.
A video captured by someone on a boat next to the capsized excursion ship filmed tourists wearing life vests screaming as people on the neighboring boat flung them life preservers. Someone in the video can be heard saying, "OK, OK, breathe" as someone standing on the side of the catamaran was filmed grabbing onto a rope as the boat was tipping over onto its other side.
The boat was traveling from Paradise Island to Blue Lagoon Island, which is a popular tourist destination northeast of the capital of Nassau.
It is not immediately clear how the tourist died. Authorities said that she was found unresponsive as they rescued others from the water. She was given CPR and then taken to a dock where she was pronounced dead, according to police.
Newsweek reached out to the Royal Bahamas Defense Force for additional information.
Kelly Schissel, who said she was one of the passengers on the catamaran recalled the incident in a video uploaded to TikTok. She explained how she didn't understand what was going on at first, since she was on the top level of the boat, but as she looked over the edge, she saw water coming into the catamaran.
"And then one of the crew members that was downstairs ran upstairs was crying, freaking out, absolutely balling, grabbing a life jacket and then that's when everybody's like oh s***, this is real, something's happening," Schissel said in the video.
Schissel added: "You wanna know why people didn't jump in right away? We were kinda waiting for the staff to tell us what to do, which they never did because they were too busy crying or freaking out or as you've seen one guy was on his phone."
The passenger said that they eventually started to jump into the water.
"So we all jump in and it was actually pretty rough waves. So a lot of people, they were just trying to stay above water even with their life vests," Schissel said.
Update 11/15/23, 3:25 p.m. ET: This story was updated with a new video.
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Rachel Dobkin is a Newsweek reporter based in New York. Her focus is reporting on politics. Rachel joined Newsweek in ... Read more