Trigger warning
In a tragic incident, an 18-month-old Indiana girl fell to her death from the 11th storey of a cruise ship in Puerto Rico. The little girl named Chloe, was playing with her grandfather in a kid's area?on the 11th floor of Freedom of the Seas at the time of the freak accident.?
"Chloe wanted to bang on the glass like she always did at her older brothers' hockey games. Her grandfather thought there was glass just like everywhere else, but there was not, and she was gone in an instant," Michael Winkleman, a Miami attorney who¡¯s representing the girl¡¯s family, said in a statement.?
Unlike what the media has portrayed the incident to be, Chloe Wiegand in reality slipped from her grandfather¡¯s hands while he was holding her out of an 11th-floor window.?
Her grandfather didn't intentionally drop her.?
According to reports, the maternal grandfather, identified as Salvatore Anello, is also believed to have slipped and fallen while holding the toddler by a window. There is a pool, spa, fitness center and bars and cafes on the 11th deck and the child fell onto the concrete dock below, reports?stlucianewsonline.
"You have a wall of windows with one hidden hole," said Winkleman. Unknowingly, then, the grandfather places Chloe on the wood railing before the wall of windows, believing Chloe will bang on the glass just like she does at her brother's hockey games, "and the next thing he knows, she's gone,"attorney told CNN.?
Horrified passengers said they had heard a ¡®cry of pain¡¯ from the girl¡¯s mother."We heard the screams of the families because we were close," a nearby passenger told?CBS news.?
"I looked because of the mother¡¯s cry. That tonality, a scream of pain of that nature, does not compare with any other scream," said another witness.?
The girl had a hard landing on the concrete of the Pan American dock in San Juan, and died in hospital shortly afterwards.
Sgt Nelson Sotelo told Associated Press on Tuesday that the girl¡¯s family will remain in the US territory until the investigation of her death is complete.
Winkleman said the family wanted to know why a window that ¡°should have been closed securely¡± was open. Winkleman said the family is ¡°understandably too distraught to talk¡± about the tragedy.
Chloe's parents hope to take her body which is currently with San Juan authorities, home to South Bend, Indiana, for their little cherub's last rites.
¡°The family needs answers as to why there would be an open window in a wall full of fixed windows in a kids¡¯ play area? Why would you have the danger without any warning, sign, or notice?¡± he asked.
South Bend Mayor and Democratic?presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg?retweeted the police's statement on Twitter on Monday evening and added, 'We are saddened by the terrible accident that took the life of Officer Wiegand¡¯s young daughter, and the city is holding this family in our hearts'.
Twitter/The Sun
The South Bend Police Department in Indiana said in a statement: ¡°The South Bend Police Department offers its sincerest condolences to Officer Alan Wiegand and his family during this difficult time following the tragic loss of their child while in Puerto Rico."?