A year later, questions remain

The DiPieros have closely followed the issue of safety on cruise ships.

By JEANNE STARMACK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

CANFIELD — May 14 was a bittersweet anniversary for Ron and Sue DiPiero.

Sweet, because a year ago to the day, they got to hear their 21-year-old son Daniel’s voice. Bitter, because it would be the last time they would ever hear it.

It was Mother’s Day, Sue remembered, and the last gift she would have from him was his voice on the telephone.

“It was 6:30 a.m.,” Ron said, when he called from the airport on his way to a 10-day cruise out of Miami on Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas. “He wanted to tell Sue ‘Happy Mother’s Day.’”

He was excited, they said, because the plane trip would be his first. He called again later that day when he was on the ship in Miami, ready to sail to the Bahamas.

That was Sunday. On Monday, his parents would get word that their son, who looked forward to meeting girls in bikinis, zip-lining through the tropical jungle and scuba diving on what he said would be his best-ever vacation, had vanished.

Reported missing

He had been reported missing to shipboard officials at 11 a.m. Monday, May 15, after friends he was traveling with couldn’t find him.

His parents got word Monday evening as Ron, still groggy from knee surgery that day, was just waking up.

Ron and Sue and two of their daughters went to Mariner of the Seas later that week while it was in the Virgin Islands. Their third daughter, who lives in Nevada, arrived later with her husband.

It was there that they were shown footage from a ship’s security video that proved the unthinkable had happened — Daniel, while leaning over the railing at 2:15 a.m. that Monday morning, fell off the ship into the sea below.

He’d been drinking a lot Sunday evening, a fact that the cruise line and his parents don’t dispute.

After falling asleep around midnight on a chair on the ship’s fourth deck, he had awakened two hours later and leaned over the rail to be sick.

What family wonders

No one missed him until it was far too late. And that raised questions with the DiPiero family — questions they still struggle with. The cruise line hasn’t provided satisfactory answers, they say.

How was it, they wonder, that their son and brother could have fallen overboard without anyone noticing? Why weren’t the security tapes monitored so that ship personnel knew immediately that the accident happened?

The cruise line concurred last year that the footage isn’t monitored live.

After Daniel’s friends reported him missing, the cruise line searched for him on the ship and then on a private island where it had docked. He was not reported missing to the Coast Guard until 7 p.m. The family would learn later that where he’d fallen was nine miles off the coast of Freeport, Bahamas. It would have taken 20 minutes to reach him if the ship had known about the accident when it happened, Sue said.

Why was the railing in the spot where he had fallen over so low? Royal Caribbean said its railings are built to International Maritime Organization standards.

But the railing where the accident happened was only waist-high to their son, who was about 6 feet tall and top-heavy with a long torso, Ron said. He recalls watching the footage of his son leaning over the rail. Both of Daniel’s feet slid backwards at the same time until finally, his weight pulled him over and he slid down the side. A nonskid surface on the floor near the railing might have stopped his son from falling, he believes.

Film was edited

Did any ship employees see Daniel asleep on the deck that night? The DiPieros say they don’t know, because the security film was edited so that the entire two hours he lay asleep wasn’t shown. If so, they wonder, why wasn’t Daniel helped back to his cabin?

The cruise line, in a statement last year that it stands by today, points out that alcohol was found in Daniel’s and his friends’ luggage, smuggled aboard in violation of ship policy.

The DiPieros say that Daniel’s friends may have brought alcohol aboard, but Daniel did not. Sue also reiterates in a lawsuit filed earlier this month against the cruise line that her son did drink at several bars that night after being shut off at one.

But Ron hasn’t much patience for people who suggest that his son had only himself to blame for what happened.

They were on a ship, he pointed out. No one was worried about driving. Everyone was set to have a good time. “It could happen to your kid in a bar down the street,” he said. “Only on board ship, you feel safer. And you’re not.”

Following issue

Safety on cruise ships is an issue the DiPieros have taken to heart, and for the past year, they’ve followed it closely. They went on Montel Williams’ talk show last fall to tell their son’s story. They’ve befriended other people who feel victimized by cruise lines because of missing loved ones or crimes committed onboard ships.

They went to Washington, D.C., to watch a hearing on improving cruise ship safety and crime-reporting before the House Transportation maritime subcommittee. They feel vindicated because that committee said it might draft legislation to force better reporting.

Ships are party boats now, Sue said. The days of people playing shuffleboard on deck and going to bed when it’s dark are over. Cruise lines, they contend, need to take more precautions.

What about GPS-tracking bracelets for passengers? What about netting or grating along the sides of ships to catch someone falling over a railing?

They’ve been mulling these questions and more since last year when suddenly, bewilderingly, their son was lost at sea and is found, now, only in their memories.