More details have emerged of the final moments of a young Florida athlete who jumped overboard from a Royal Caribbean cruise ship during a drunken argument with his father.
Broward County Police today identified the missing man as Levion Parker 20, of North Port, Florida, after the US Coast Guard abandoned its search in waters off the Bahamas.
The Liberty of the Seas cruise ship was just hours away from returning to Fort Lauderdale after a four-day cruise when Father Francel Parker encountered Levion and his brother Seth, 18, getting out of a hot tub around 3:30 a.m. the morning.
“I guess his dad was bothering him for being drunk,” said fellow passenger Bryan Sims.
“When we got to them, he said to his father, ‘I’ll fix this right now.’ And he jumped out the window in front of all of us.
Levion Parker, 20, was a high school football player and popular athlete from North Port, Florida.
Dad Francel, pictured left, with his wife Rosemary and sons Levion and Seth, runs an air conditioning company and was on board as a guest of wholesaler Tropic Supply.
The ship was ordered to stop after Levion jumped nearly 200 feet from the 15-deck ship’s 11th deck while 57 miles from Grand Inagua at 4 a.m. on April 4.
It is unclear how Levion would have become “intoxicated,” as the minimum drinking age on Royal Caribbean ships for voyages originating in North America or the Caribbean is 21.
Social media posts show a popular, athletic young man who loved to hunt and fish, and who played football at North Port High School before graduating in 2022.
Sims said Levion and his brother had been chatting happily in the jacuzzi on the 11th deck of the 154,000-ton liner moments before the horrific April 4 incident.
“I had been with him and his brother in the hot tub until 3:30 a.m.,” Sims told the New York Post.
There was standing room only. She sat next to me the entire time.
‘We chatted about different things and he told me that he worked on yachts and other types of boats in Florida.
‘I would say that between 3:30 and 3:45 am, he and his brother got out of the jacuzzi. I just assumed they were heading to bed.
‘Everyone had left the jacuzzi at 4am and went their separate ways.
‘I went out, went to the bathroom, dried myself off, put on my shirt and walked from the front of the ship to the rear elevators to go down to my room.
‘When I approached the back of the ship on the pool deck, I saw him, his brother and his father coming out of the sliding doors near the elevators.
‘They were walking in my direction and his father had his arm around him and they were talking.
The eleventh deck features a variety of jacuzzis, pools and a ‘Splashaway Bar’
Levion had been with his brother Seth chatting with other guests in a hot tub on deck 11 until 3:30 a.m. on the last night of the four-day cruise.
Images on social media show a happy, sporty young man who loved deep sea fishing.
“We chatted about different things and he told me he worked on yachts and other types of vessels in Florida,” passenger Bryan Sims told Dailymail.com.
“I guess his dad was bothering him for being drunk,” said fellow passenger Bryan Sims. “When we got to them, he said to his father, ‘I’ll fix this right now.’ And he jumped out the window in front of all of us.”
“When they were right in front of me when we were passing each other, he walked away from his father and said, ‘I’ll fix this for you right now,’ and that’s when he jumped out the window.
“It was literally 8 to 10 feet in front of me.”
‘It was one of the sliding windows next to the soft serve ice cream machine.
‘The ship was moving quite fast because it was during the night and we were traveling a long distance.
‘We were screaming and his father was calling for everyone to stop the boat.
—From what I’ve heard, I know that it takes about a mile to stop the ship and turn around.
“A lot of crew were up and they started launching the smaller boats to search after we turned around and got back into the area, I guess.”
Levion’s father owns an air conditioning business and the family was on board as guests of Tropic Supply, a Florida-based air conditioning wholesaler.
He had invited dozens of his contractors on the trip to mark the company’s 50th anniversary.
The ship had docked in the Dominican Republic the previous day and was 57 miles off the coast of Bahamas Grand Inagua when the alarm was raised.
Passenger Deborah Morrison said the crew was “immediately alerted” by the “screams” that erupted, and that the man’s family appeared “out of it.”
The 1,100-foot ship came to a screeching halt and crew members immediately began searching for the missing passenger.
But most of the 4,000 passengers on board were unaware of the tragedy until the captain broke the news to them the next morning.
“They announced it over the public address system while we were eating breakfast and the whole room went silent,” one passenger wrote on Reddit. “Then the rest of the cruise felt strangely informal.”
Some passengers scanned the young man’s image before the ship resumed its journey just before 9 a.m., when the US Coast Guard Cutter Seneca arrived on the scene.
“The early morning was definitely bleak, as many people came out of their cabins to look out to sea, hoping they could help find the person,” said passenger Amy Phelps Fouse.
“It was a sad morning looking just to see if we could find a clue,” wrote another.
“I was on the boat and when the coast guard arrived and we set off I couldn’t help but think about what they must have felt leaving their son behind,” added Linda Meissner Nuffe.
It is believed that the young man was staying with his family on deck 10, a section below the jacuzzis on deck 11.
Nuffe, who was staying in the cabin next door, woke up to find a lock on the family cabin door and a crew member standing guard outside.
“I saw a person go into that cabin the first day,” he said.
‘I thought he was a teenager or might have been 20 years old. My daughter and I told her that she sometimes put my decorations on other doors on the last night to confuse people. The river.
“He was calm and polite, not someone who looked like a heavy alcoholic as the press seems to say.”
“We never heard any noise outside that cabin, no parties, no arguments, no slamming doors. I looked over our balcony at theirs after seeing the lock, there was nothing but chairs there.
More than 400 passengers are known to have fallen overboard on cruise ships in the past 30 years, according to watchdog cruisejunkie.com.
A study by the Cruise Lines International Association found that only 28 percent of those who went overboard between 2009 and 2019 came out alive.
Travel attorney and blogger Jim Walker said Royal Caribbean, along with the vast majority of U.S. cruise companies, have yet to install automatic man overboard systems as required by the Cruise Safety Act of 2010.
“These automated MOB systems use state-of-the-art radar, infrared, video and motion detection technology to instantly detect when someone passes over the gunnels of a cruise ship,” he said.
Levion with a catch from a night fishing expedition
Passenger Bryan Sims was one of the last people to speak to Levion and was less than 10 feet away when the young man jumped to his death in front of his horrified father.
The 154,000-ton Royal Caribbean ship was sailing with more than 4,000 passengers on a four-day cruise from Fort Lauderdale to the Dominican Republic and back.
«The system can follow the person’s movements in the water even at night.
“Without such a system, the chances of locating a person who falls into the water at night are like finding a needle in a haystack.”
The search by the U.S. Coast Guard has since been suspended, a spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard 7th District Public Affairs Team confirmed.
Francel told Dailymail.com that the family is consulting lawyers and plans to issue a statement.
A Royal Caribbean spokesperson said: “The ship’s crew immediately launched a search and rescue effort alongside the US Coast Guard.
‘Our care team is providing support and assistance to the guest’s family during this difficult time.
“For the privacy of the guest and their family, we have no additional details to share.”
Dailymail.com has contacted the company for further clarification.