April 4 (UPI) -- The Coast Guard is searching between Cuba and the Bahamas after an allegedly drunken 20-year-old jumped from one of the upper decks of a cruise ship, officials said.
The unidentified man jumped from the 18-story Liberty of the Seas cruise ship, part of the Royal Caribbean fleet, and the 35th largest in the world, the Coast Guard said.
Witnesses said the man's father and brother watched as he jumped, seemingly on a spur of the moment, over the side and into the sea about 57 miles off the coast of the Bahamas Grand Inagua, according to the Coast Guard.
"I had hung out with him and his brother in the hot tub until 3:30," passenger Bryan Sims tells The New York Post. " It was standing room only. He sat right beside me the whole time."
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"He was pretty drunk," Sims continued. "As we were walking from the hot tub back to the elevators, his dad and brother were walking towards us. His dad was fussing at him for being drunk, I guess.
"When we got to them, he said to his dad, 'I'll fix this right now.' And he jumped out the window in front of us all."
"There was a lot of yelling, and the crew was alerted immediately," another passenger, Deborah Morrison, said. "His family was horrified. Just beside themselves. I can't even begin to imagine what they're going through."
"It was insane," says Sims. "It was just surreal."
The 4-day, round-trip Eastern Caribbean Cruise set sail from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale on Monday and is set to return on Friday, according to CruiseMapper. The Coast Guard is conducting the search from the water and the air.
