Family's cruise hell: "They laughed while he drowned"
A 19-year-old Canadian woman has broken her silence after a horror cruise, during which she says passengers laughed and staff did nothing while her father was drowning at sea.
Venezia Hebecker was holidaying with her parents in the Bahamas onboard a Norwegian Escape cruise ship when the heart-stopping moment took place.
Talking to News Corp, Venezia recalls sunbaking on the last day of the trip when she overheard a group of passengers joking about a man drowning during a snorkelling excursion.
She decided to check on her 52-year-old dad, Marino, only to find a woman running in the other direction holding his snorkel.
“I started bawling my eyes out because I totally thought he was gone,” she said. “She had reassured me that he was okay but I needed to go to medical as soon as possible because my dad ... was not breathing.”
Despite being considered a strong swimmer, Marino had been caught in a strong current 60 metres out to sea, where his desperate cries for help were ignored.
“He remembers waving at the lifeguard, who ignored him, then screaming for the lifeguard, who ignored him again. He was screaming for his life and everyone thought it was a joke.”
It was only thanks to the efforts of two children who alerted a man who then dragged him out of the water.
“Through it all, no crew member had come to the stateroom or even called to see how he was doing,” Venezia wrote on the GoFundMe page set up to pay for her dad’s medical expenses. “Absolutely nothing was done for him through it all even considering this all happened on their island under their ‘lifeguards’ supervision.”
Rushed to the hospital in a critical condition, Marino now faces a difficult path towards recovery. Shockingly, his daughter says no one from the cruise line offered any help or sympathy during or after the ordeal.
“I definitely think that they should be ashamed of themselves. I could have lost my father if it weren’t for the help of those kids as well as the man, not the lifeguard.”
Image credit: Venezia Hebecker/Facebook.