The woman who fell overboard on a Mexico-bound Carnival Cruise Line ship was on her first cruise — a Christmas gift from her husband, her mother said.
Juwanna Brooks, 44, was identified by her mother as the woman who fell overboard Sunday while she was a passenger on the Carnival Triumph.
“I just want to believe that they’re going to find something,” her mother, Marilyn Winfrey, told CBS affiliate KLFY in Louisiana. “I just want to be able to put her to rest.”
Brooks was last seen falling overboard into the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mexican Navy was still searching for her as of Wednesday, the Miami Herald reported. She was on the second day of a five-day cruise that left New Orleans on Saturday for Cozumel, Mexico.
Brooks was talking to her mom in the moments before she went missing.
“I texted her up until dinner and that was my last time hearing her,” Winfrey told KLFY.
Brooks and her husband, who lived in Lafayette, La., even sent her a video before boarding the Triumph on Saturday.
“We’ve been trying to get in touch with the embassy in Mexico, but it’s a long process and we haven’t heard anything yet but they are still looking for her,” Winfrey told the news channel.
Her family is holding out hope Brooks, a 44-year-old grandmother, may still be found.
She also dismissed rumors Brooks may have jumped over the railing.
“I did hear rumors that she possibly jumped, but there’s no way she could, she’s only 5-foot-1,” she told KLFY. “There’s a lot of rumors going around and we don’t know, it’s still under investigation by the FBI. We’re still waiting we haven’t heard anything yet.”
Brooks’ fall was the second incident for the Miami-based Carnival in a matter of days.
A woman fell to her death from the balcony of her cabin aboard the Carnival Elation en route to the Bahamas.
Authorities have not released the woman’s name or why she fell.
Source NY Daily News