Coast Guard searching for man who fell from cruise ship off Florida coast
FILE - The Carnival cruise line ship Carnival Magic sits docked on April, 2020, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The U.S. Coast Guard said Tuesday, May 30, 2023, that it’s searching for a man who fell from a cruise ship off the coast of Florida. The 35-year-old was on the Carnival Magic when he fell from the ship about 186 miles east of Jacksonville, Fla., on Monday, May 29. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — The U.S. Coast Guard said Tuesday that it’s searching for a man who fell from a cruise ship off the coast of Florida.
The 35-year-old passenger fell from the Carnival Magic ship about 185 miles (300 kilometers) east of Jacksonville on Monday, the service said in a statement. The Coast Guard is searching from the air and water.
The Coast Guard said it had spent nearly 20 hours searching more than 4,000 square miles (10,000 square kilometers) by Tuesday afternoon. The search by air was scheduled to pause at sunset, while ships would continue looking for the man through Tuesday night.
The man’s companion reported him missing late Monday afternoon, the statement said. Security footage on the ship shows that the man “leaned over the railing of his stateroom balcony and dropped into the water” around 4 a.m., according to the statement.
Carnival said the Coast Guard released the ship from search efforts and told the captain to head back to port in Norfolk, Virginia. The ship can hold nearly 4,000 guests and is about 1,000 feet (300 meters) long.