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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
Roatan, Honduras came onto my radar this year when several tourists contacted us after being robbed or sexually assaulted at gunpoint during cruise stopovers. Later we were the first to report on a Norwegian Cruise Line crew member who was shot in the head for his cell phone in Coxen Hole near the cruise port.
Three Shots In Just 12 Hours reads the headlines in the Tribune newspaper today. Other articles in the local newspapers in Nassau include Tourist: I was Victim of Sex Attack by Jet Ski Operators.
The U.S. Embassy in Nassau has issued a warning to U.S. citizens of the danger of women (including girls) being
The last time that I wrote about Mexico I’m sure that I angered the tourism representatives there: Three Cruise Lines Plan to Return to Mazatlan: Will They Provide Bullet-Proof Jackets to Passengers?
Taking your family to a place like Mazatlan, Acapulco or most any port in Mexico seems unnecessarily risky to me. Admittedly
In a short article entitled "Man Shot Dead," the Nassau Guardian announced today that 99 people have been murdered in the Bahamas so far in 2014. The murder rate will exceed last year’s total. The majority of the homicides have occurred in Nassau.
The Tribune newspaper in Nassau contains a letter to
The headlines in the Nassau, Bahamas newspapers over the last 24 hours are ominous – Man Shot Dead in Home Invasion, Shot Dead Defending Parents and Fatal Shooting in Fox Hill.
These murders take the number of homicides in the Bahamas to 96 and 97 for the year.
The Nassau newspapers
Latore Mackey, the press secretary to the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, was shot in the neck and killed early Monday morning.
Mr. Mackey’s death was the fifth in less than 36 hours according to the Tribune newspaper in Nassau.
Violent crime in out of control in Nassau.
Young gun-totting men are on the rampage.
In less than three days after Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández declared that guns are prohibited in Roatan and the Bay Islands, a young man was gunned down early on Sunday morning.
Teledifusora Insular reports that Henry Alexander Almendarez Orellana was shot by two men in the early morning hours of July 13th.
The crime reportedly
Its been nine years since George Smith disappeared during his honeymoon cruise aboard the Royal Caribbean Brilliance of the Seas.
CBS focuses on new developments in the cruise ship mystery, in a 48 Hours story entitled "Murder at Sea?"
Its introduction says: a newlywed vanishes off the cruise ship where he was honeymooning
The Department of State in the United States issued another warning about the high crime rate in Honduras, saying that "the level of crime and violence in Honduras remains critically high." You can read the June 24 2014 warning here.
The last warning from the U.S. state Department was issued on Christmas Eve, December
Roatan Honduras came onto the radar of Cruise Law News in January of this year when a U.S. family who took a Carnival cruise to the island was robbed at gun point while driving in a rental car. The bandito shot the car up, terrifying the three children in the car as well as
A day after we summarized the U.S. report on the high level of crime which is affecting U.S. tourists and cruise passengers in the Bahamas, the major newspapers in Nassau published articles about the report.
The Nassau Tribune published U.S. Warns Again Over Crime In The Bahamas. The Tribune also published several other articles
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The U.S. Department of State recently published the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) crime report for the Bahamas for 2014.
It is a grim report.
It reflects the considerable problems with violent crimes against tourists and cruise visitors over the past year which we have been discussing.
We copied the relevant portions of the report below
We’ve received a fair share of hate e-mail this year after we reported on several crimes against cruise tourists in Roatan during the first three months of this year. Many expatriate property owners and business operators became highly agitated when we were the first in the U.S. to report on the murder of a NCL
The President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, has updated his Facebook page, indicating that he has traveled to Miami to meet with cruise line officials. He posted:
"Este día ha sido muy productivo, después de una reunión con 2 empresas de Cruceros en Miami, donde definimos incrementar el número de turistas a Honduras."
Translated, he
The last thing that a family going on vacation wants to think of is being victims of crime. Cruise lines spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars a year creating idyllic illusions of tropical vacations on beautiful Caribbean beaches. But behind that slick marketing facade lies danger.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime recently
