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Teenager dies after falling from cruise ship balcony
A teenage boy has died on board Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas after falling from an eighth floor balcony.
According to reports, the 16-year-old didn’t have his room card and was trying to get into his room from an adjacent balcony when he slipped and fell onto a pier.
He sustained major head trauma and was pronounced dead at 11.42am on Saturday morning.
The boy has been named as Laurent Mercer from the French islands of Wallis and Futuna in the South Pacific.
The incident happened when the ship was was docked in Labadee, Haiti, its first stop on a seven-day cruise of the Western Caribbean.
In a brief statement, Royal Caribbean said: "We are saddened by the loss of one our guests in a tragic accident."
On Christmas Day, a 20-year-old British citizen fell overboard from the same ship, around 267 miles northwest of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, and has not been found.
Arron Hough was an entertainer on Harmony of the Seas and was reported missing after failing to turn up for work.
CCTV footage showed him entering an area on deck in the early hours of the morning, but after that he was not seen again.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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