OMG! 32-year old woman falls overboard during carnival!

The US Coast Guard is searching for a woman
who fell overboard from a Carnival cruise ship
early Wednesday, according to a news release.
The woman was Rina Patel, 32, of Interlaken,
New York, the Coast Guard said in a statement.
While witnesses said they saw her fall off the
11th deck of the Carnival Ecstasy at 2:30 a.m.,
the cruise ship company released a statement
saying she was "witnessed jumping overboard."
She was wearing a white dress with a pink floral
pattern, the Coast Guard said.
The ship was 27 miles southwest of Freeport,
Bahamas, when Patel went overboard. That's
due east of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, but at least
dozens of miles from the US coastline.
The Carnival crew notified the 7th Coast Guard
District Command Center, which launched a
search operation.
Shannon Parks of Ocean Isle Beach, North
Carolina, said she was sleeping when the crew
sounded a ship-wide alert.
"It was one of those surreal things where it
came on and they said it and you had to stop
and think, 'Did they just say man overboard?'
And then they repeated it four more times," she
told CNN.
On social media, Parks shared images of a
search plane flying over the cruise ship at dawn.
In another photo, taken around 3:40 a.m. ET, a
small search vessel cuts through the dark water,
its path illuminated by a flare.
Coast Guard Air Station Miami has sent an
MH-65 Dolphin helicopter, an HC-144 Ocean
Sentry airplane and a cutter, the Gannet, to hunt
for the woman. Another cutter, the Bernard C.
Webber, and its crew were also diverted to help
with the search.
The Ecstasy's last port of call was Tuesday in
Nassau, Bahamas. It was scheduled to arrive
home in Charleston, South Carolina, on Thursday.
According to Carnival, the 855-foot Ecstasy
carries up to nearly 3,000 passengers and crew.
Billed as family-friendly and affordable, the ship
departs from Charleston on four- and five-day
cruises with stops in Bahamian ports of call,
including Nassau, Freeport and Half Moon Cay.


Source :cnn
Edited by DANIEL IKECHUKWU EKWUNIFE