The Miami Herald reports today on a disturbing case aboard the Carnival Magic where a cruise guest, who became irate when asked to be quit in a theater on the ship, “smashed his cocktail glass into a man’s face and beat him during a theater show.”

The vicious physical assault was first reported by a local news station in Norfolk, Virginia, WVEW 13News Now who reported in October that the victim, who was cut in the face, let out “a blood-curdling scream” when he was attacked.

The U.S. federal government identified the man as Michael Truman, age 39, who committed the vicious assault. He pled guilty to assaulting a fellow passenger with a dangerous weapon. He was charged in federal court for the district of Virginia given the fact that the assailant resides in Portsmouth, Virgina and the Carnival ship sailed from Norfolk, Virginia.

According to a Department of Justice’s press statement:

“Michael Truman, 39, … was loudly disrupting a theater show aboard the cruise ship when he was asked twice by a fellow passenger to quiet down. After Truman refused, the passenger began to leave the area to request assistance from a cruise ship employee. Truman then smashed a cocktail glass into the victim’s face, got on top of the victim, and began striking him further. The broken glass caused significant lacerations to the victim’s face, requiring more than a dozen stitches.” (emphasis added) An article today by USA TODAY states that the face wound requires nineteen stitches.

The Miami Herald article contains a photograph of the broken bar glass used to smash and cut the victim in the face.  

The assailant was found in his cabin after the attack bleeding from his right hand. According to the Miami Herald, the court file shows that the assailant told ship security “he did not know how he got the cut on his hand, claimed he had consumed (only) three or four drinks of alcohol that day, and offered to stay in his room for the rest of the cruise.”

:The wife of the man who officials said was beaten witnessed the assault and told investigators Truman appeared intoxicated,” according to an arrest affidavit in the court record.

Carnival Cruise Line is well known for its drunken bar brawls fueled by all-you-can-drink packages and inadequately trained security staff whose main function seems to be trying to stop passengers from filming the out-of-control violence. Carnival seems to have made a corporate decision to tolerate the debauchery of drunken in order to maximize profits.

It comes as no surprise that the last year of cruise crime data (2023) showed that there were at least fourteen (14) incidents of physical assault with serious bodily injury reported on Carnival cruise ships to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) in year 2023. The Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act of 2010 requires that cruise lines report certain crimes, such as physical assaults and rape/sexual assaults, to the DOT. In addition, Carnival has by far the highest number of sexual assaults and rapes of any cruise line on the high seas. Carnival ships have a higher per capita sexual assault rate (per 100,000) than 27 states in the U.S.

There appears to be a direct correlation between excessive alcohol and violence and violence against women on Carnival ships. Don’t expect Carnival to clamp down on selling excessive booze to its guests anytime soon, given the fact that has over $30,000,000,000 (billion) of long term debt.

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Image credit: Carnival Magic Norfolk, Virginia – Jim Walker; broken bar glass – FBI via Miami Herald.