Today the Nassau Tribune reports that a garbage truck ran over and dragged a passenger who was ashore from the Carnival Sensation. The Canadian was traveling with his family. He received "serious injuries to his lower extremities and was pronounced dead on the scene.”
The truck driver told police that his brakes failed as he
The St. Lucia Times reports today that, according to the the Saint Lucia Vendors Association, crime is escalating to the point that cruise lines may consider dropping Saint Lucia from their itinerary. Five years ago, Norwegian Cruise Lines, (NCL) dropped St. Lucia because of attacks on cruise passengers (see below).
The president of the vendors association
A retired Supreme Court justice is suggesting that all Bahamas-flagged cruise ships require that passenger disputes (including claims involving personal injury) be arbitrated in the Bahamas, according to the Tribune newspaper.
The Bahamian newspaper reports that former justice Rubie Nottage told a group of arbitrators yesterday that arbitrating cruise passenger disputes would generate a
"New Crime Warnings – Brits, Canadians Put Citizens on Alert" read the headlines of the Nassau Guardian yesterday.
The newspaper reports that the governments of Britain and Canada issued advisories to their citizens about the rising armed crimes in New Providence and Grand Bahama.
Britain updated its travel advisory to state that: "There
I have written several dozen articles in the last several years about the high crime rate in Nassau. The murder rate in the Bahamas is well over 30 per 100,000 compared to the U.S. murder rate of around 4.5 per 100,000. I have published articles about cruise passengers being raped and robbed ashore (29
The Bahamian newspapers report that 4 men were murdered in Nassau on Friday and Saturday.
The Tribune reports that the police engaged in a shoot four with armed men early yesterday. One man had an AK-47 assault rifle. The police killed one man and arrested two others. The fourth suspect is being sought.
The Tribune says
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The U.K.’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office has issued "foreign travel advice" for travelers to the Bahamas. The U.K. crime warning says:
"There have been incidents of violent crime including robbery, which is often armed and sometimes fatal, in residential and tourist areas of New Providence, Grand Bahama and Freeport. The number of break-ins and
The U.S. State Department has issued a critical crime warning for Nassau, Bahamas today. The warning is titled Security Message for U.S. Citizens: Nassau (Bahamas), Nassau Violent Crime.
The warning states that U.S. citizens residing in and traveling to the Bahamas to be aware of their surroundings and remain on heightened alert to avoid
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The United States Department of State just issued a warning to U.S. citizens that the level of crime and violence in Honduras remains "critically high."
The warning is similar to the critical crime warning issued by the U.S. State Department last year.
The warning states that ". . . crime and violence are serious problems
The U.S Department of State just released the The Bahamas 2015 Crime and Safety Report. Armed robberies, property theft, and purse snatchings remain the most common crimes perpetrated against tourists.
The report noted that the Bahamian government has not made public comprehensive, updated national crime statistics since July 2013. However, the U.S. report indicates that
Newspapers in Jamaica are reporting that two U.S. citizens from a Carnival cruise ship are unaccounted for after disembarking in Falmouth on Monday, January 12th.
The two men are identified in the Jamaica Observer as 42-year-old Shelby Person and 45-year-old Tyrone Rideout, both of Weeping Willow, Maryland.
They disembarked from the Carnival Victory shortly after
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This weekend was one of the bloodiest in the Bahamas this year. Seven people shot and three dead.
By my calculations, the death toll for the year in the Bahamas is 118 (last year was 119 murders). The murders are primarily in Nassau.
According to the Tribune, an 18-year-old out of jail on bail
This morning I received a number of emails from residents of Roatan about an extremely violent murder of a local merchant in Roatan (Coxen Hole) near the port.
Four men attacked and repeatedly beat Mr. Marcelino Vásquez (age 58), the proprietor of a store called "Commercial Vasquez." An article in Teledifusora Insular states that Mr. Vásquez
On December 3, 2014, two teenagers and two young men reportedly went hunting iguanas in the Bay Islands (Roatan) and never returned home.
A local television station in Roatan identified them as Cristian Leiva (age 15), Yeison Mejía (age 17), Marlon Reynaldo Lazar Melendez (age 24) and Luis Alberto Perez Chirinos (age 27). The names in the
Yahoo Travel published an article today that’s certain to upset the tourism representatives in the Caribbean islands which are dependent on cruise tourism.
Entitled The Worst Caribbean Cruise Ports of Call, the article lists the five ports in the Caribbean with the worst reputations. Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis has heard of
WPRO radio interviewed me this morning on its news talk radio show with Gene Valicenti about the New York Times article focusing on crime in Nassau, Bahamas.
WPRO has a large readership in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
We talked about U.S. citizens who were victims of armed robberies. We talked about tourists
eTN Global Travel Industry News recently published an article about tourism issues in the United States Virgin Islands (USVI) and the USVI Commissioner of Tourism, Beverly Nicholson-Doty.
In its original publication, eTN cited several sources of information for the proposition that the USVI has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the world. The territory has a
I had not previously heard of the specific incidents of crimes against U.S. citizens listed in yesterday’s advisory from the U.S. Embassy in Nassau. The embassy said that "over the past several weeks there has been an increase in the level of crime in areas where U.S. citizens live and frequent." The embassy listed seven
