A news station in California is reporting that a woman is dead after falling around 75 feet from the Queen Mary in Long Beach Harbor Monday evening.
KABC News in Long Beach states that the woman "fell off a walkway" around 8:30 p.m. yesterday evening and plunged into the water below.
Another person jumped into the water to try and rescue the woman, followed by two Long Beach police officers.
The BelmontShores-Naples Patch has the most complete information. This newspaper states that the 26 year old woman fell from the upper gangway after arguing with her 40 year old boyfriend.
The newspaper reports that that two unidentified employees witnessed the argument and the woman falling into the water. Although ordered not to talk, they provided eyewitness detail.
They said that the woman had been arguing, with a man they called her boyfriend, near the center of the top level gangway for nearly 10 minutes. One employee recounted that the woman allegedly said "I don’t want to live, I don’t want to be with you anymore, I don’t want to go on."
She made a "motion like she was going to go over the rail and slipped."
The 40 year old man then "ran down the steps to the bottom landing and jumped in."
The newspaper states that one of the employees saw the entire (nearly 10 minute) argument, while the second employee said he saw the final three or four minutes.
She was taken to a hospital in critical condition and later died.
Although many news sources refer to the Queen Mary as a "cruise ship," in 1967 it was removed from the British registry and officially turned over to the city of Long Beach. The once storied vessel was operated by Cunard. The vessel had its inaugural voyage in 1936; it was used as a troop transport in the second world war; and it enjoyed its "golden years" in the 1950’s and 1960’s. It is now operated as a hotel and is fully dependent on shore utilities.