Colin Rugg video screengrab / X
New details have emerged surrounding the June 29 rescue of the 5-year-old girl who was saved by her father after she fell from a Disney cruise ship, revealing that she accidentally slipped through a porthole into the ocean when she lost her balance on a railing.
FOX News reported that the child was sitting on a railing near the porthole and fell backward off the Disney Dream cruise ship, investigators said. Though her father reportedly did not see the fall, the girl’s mother alerted him, prompting him to immediately dive into the ocean to save his daughter. According to Broward Sheriff’s Office, the article said, security footage from the ship supported the way the family described what happened, which remains under investigation.
CatholicVote reported July 1 that once the father found his daughter, he treaded water for more than 10 minutes before the cruise ship’s rescue team was able to arrive. The ship had been traveling at full speed at the time of the girl’s fall, CatholicVote noted. According to FOX News, the entire time of the incident, from the fall to the recovery of father and daughter by the rescue team, was about 20 minutes.
The ship was in international waters, en route to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at the time of the fall. FOX News reported that the father and daughter were checked by the ship’s medical staff once they made it back to the ship and taken to the hospital in Fort Lauderdale when the ship docked July 1. The father was hospitalized, but his injuries are unknown.
FOX News also reported that the sheriff’s office of Broward County, in which Fort Lauderdale is located, said that the family is “so blessed.”
The office added, “It’s great to be able to respond to good news rather than what could have been a tragic outcome.”
Political commentator Collin Rugg called attention to the rescue on X June 30 and posted again July 3 with the details of the child’s fall, stating that the father was “vindicated” from “Disney conspiracy theorists” who had claimed that he propped his daughter on the railing.
He posted, “The Disney cult owes this man an apology.”
