NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Police Commissioner Clayton Fernander said a disproportionate number of women died when a boat capsized on Sunday because they were trapped in a cabin near the front of the vessel.
He also revealed that police expect to bring charges in connection with the suspected human smuggling incident before the end of this week.
Fifteen of the 17 victims were women while one child between one and four also died. Rescuers rescued 25 other people.
“It appears as though the majority of the females were in the cabin,” Fernander said.
“The cabin is built to the front of the boat and they were in the cabin and when the boat would have capsized, they were trapped under the water. Don’t forget now, the boat turned over so they were trapped in there and they were unable to get out based on how many persons were in this cabin so that’s what created the monster.”
Fernander said there would have been more survivors if the women were not in the cabin.
“Yes, if it was just an open vessel, I believe more of them would have been able to survive and maybe to hang on to the overturned boat like how you saw in the footage that is out there going viral. You saw persons on top of the boat and hanging on to the boat. You would have had more of them latched on to the boat like that,” he said.
Royal Bahamas Defence Force Commander William Sturrup, head of the search, rescue, and recovery efforts, said putting the woman in the cabin likely made sense to occupants given the difficult weather.
“In adverse conditions,” he said, “you want to protect the women from the elements, you want them to be down below. It was a cabin where people could gather and lay down if they needed to. I don’t know if they had the space to but that type of boat has a cabin inside. The boat capsized in rough seas so they would have been trapped down there so more females would have perished than the males because the males were braving the conditions on the deck.”
Fernander said that three people are still in police custody and that the investigation is progressing well.
“We are now trying to do identification of some of the victims, the deceased persons,” he said.
“We trying to do some identification and then we have officers doing lines of inquiry with respect to how these individuals got here, the Haitian nationals. We believe the majority of them were here, were pretty much living in The Bahamas. One or two may have came a couple weeks prior, we’re not certain but that’s what we are following so when I come to the media I will have all those facts tidy up.
“Based on what some of the victims who survived are telling us that some of their relatives are in certain areas, we are going in those areas and we are trying to get the Haitian community, people in the Haitian community to really assist, pastors and all of them, we’re trying to get them on board and the Haitian Embassy to assist with that as well.
“I think some of them are kinda evasive to tell us who they were staying with and all of that because they believe they are going to get deported back and all of that and I think they are holding some of that information back so that’s why we are trying to get the Haitian community and the consulate general to work with us so that we can let them know there’s nothing to be afraid of and we’re not trying to get them back at this time so they could be more relaxed.”
