An 80-year-old cruise passenger has been found dead on a Great Barrier Reef island, a day after she was accidentally abandoned there by the ship’s crew.
The passenger’s daughter Katherine Rees yesterday accused the cruise company, Coral Expeditions, of a “failure of care and common sense” that left her mother, Suzanne Rees, to die alone.
Suzanne Rees, a Sydney resident, was on the second day of a cruise circumnavigating Australia when she disembarked the Coral Adventurer on Saturday last week at Lizard Island. She planned to hike with other passengers to a mountain lookout.
Photo: AP
The ship left the resort island about five hours before reporting her missing late on Saturday, officials said.
“We are shocked and saddened that the Coral Adventurer left Lizard Island after an organized excursion without my mum,” Katherine Rees, who also lives in Sydney, said in a statement. “From the little we have been told, it seems that there was a failure of care and common sense. We understand from the police that it was a very hot day, and Mum felt ill on the hill climb. She was asked to head down, unescorted. Then the ship left, apparently without doing a passenger count. At some stage in that sequence, or shortly after, Mum died, alone.”
The crew of a search helicopter spotted Suzanne Rees’ body the next day about 50m off the hiking trail to the lookout, The Australian newspaper reported.
She appeared to have fallen from a cliff or slope, the newspaper said.
Katherine Rees said she hoped a coroner’s inquiry would “find out what the company should have done that might have saved Mum’s life.”
Police said in a statement a coroner would investigate the “non-suspicious death.”
The coroner’s court also confirmed that the death had been referred for investigation.
Coral Expeditions chief executive officer Mark Fifield said his company was fully cooperating with an official investigation.
He said it would be inappropriate to comment while those investigations were under way.
“We have expressed our heartfelt condolences to the Rees family and remain deeply sorry that this has occurred,” Fifield said in a statement.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS