A mother whose 5-year-old daughter fell overboard from a Disney cruise ship in June will not face charges of child neglect, according to a Florida county state attorney’s office.
The Disney Cruise Line ship, the Disney Dream, was sailing in international waters from the Bahamas to Fort Lauderdale in Florida on June 29 when the child fell, a memorandum from the Broward County office said.
The girl’s father jumped in after her and they were both rescued and brought back on board. Videos of the incident, the memo noted, were posted to social media, where they were widely shared. Many commenters online blamed the girl’s parents for her fall saying they had endangered her to take photos.
Prosecutors decided not to charge the mother in July, a move first reported by the Daily Mail on Sunday. The memo outlining that decision contained new details about how the girl had fallen from the fourth deck of the cruise ship and what transpired after she was in the water.
According to the memo by Melissa Kelly, the assistant state attorney in charge of the office’s child fatalities and abuse unit, the mother, father and daughter were on their first cruise together, walking around the ship’s running track to explore the ship.
At around 11:30 a.m., the mother was taking photos of her daughter with her cellphone when the child climbed onto the railing encircling the running track. The railing was positioned in front of a port hole, which the mother told investigators she assumed contained a glass barrier. Her daughter lost her balance and fell backward through the port hole into the water — a distance of 49 feet.
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Mother of Girl Who Fell Overboard on Disney Cruise Will Not Face Charges
