2 Yr Old Falls from Deck 11 on Royal Caribbean Ship

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Picking up the baby "so she could bang on the glass" just makes it even worse. Why encourage/indulge that kind of behavior? Ugh. It's never a good idea to let kids bang on windows, regardless of what they are made of. I bet it annoys the people at the hockey rink too...

As a Canadian, I'm guessing you've never been to a local hockey game! (If someone sat near the glass and went a whole game WITHOUT banging on the glass everyone would be concerned!)
 
On a sunny day they look slightly different. On a cloudy day or in dimmer light conditions they may be indistinguishable. And kids press their little noses and faces against glass all the time. My kids have done that on the DCL pool deck or in that jacuzzi by the water. I have never noticed an open window on the DCL ships and wouldn’t expect one there so high up.

Now

Having actually been ON ships that have these windows, there is an obvious difference regardless of light conditions.

And from the lawyer’s statement, she was not “pressing her nose against the glass” - she wanted to bang on it like she was at a hockey rink. Which could have been done with the glass lower down if they insisted on indulging her.
 
As a Canadian, I'm guessing you've never been to a local hockey game! (If someone sat near the glass and went a whole game WITHOUT banging on the glass everyone would be concerned!)

But there is a VAST difference between being at a hockey game where “everyone is doing it” and being on a cruise ship where banging on the glass is not the norm at all. Even a 2 year old CAN be taught the appropriate time and place.
 
But there is a VAST difference between being at a hockey game where “everyone is doing it” and being on a cruise ship where banging on the glass is not the norm at all. Even a 2 year old CAN be taught the appropriate time and place.

Oh my god, please tell me we’re not going to start blaming the BABY now. This is not the appropriate time or place to rant about the manners of kids these days.
 


Oh my god, please tell me we’re not going to start blaming the BABY now. This is not the appropriate time or place to rant about the manners of kids these days.

No. And I was not blaming the baby. The baby does not know when things are appropriate and when they are not without being taught. But the grandfather - or the parents - could have said no. Just saying there were a lot of things that added up to tragedy and the tragedy could have been prevented at any of those decisions. Let her bang on the lower glass if she must bang. (I would argue again that banging on glass on a ship - especially that high up - IS asking for an accident to happen. One bang in the wrong place and the glass would shatter anyway.)
 
and get the argument made by DC to Poly regarding manslaughter on an intellectual level. However, I don't agree with it.
Thanks for the response. As I said, I'm iffy on the sentencing part. I hope I didn't come off as "let's string him up" because that wasn't my intention. We really don't have a good way of dealing with these family tragedy cases. Leaving a loaded gun accessible to kids comes to mind. Sometimes you see people charged (I would) other times its "they've suffered enough."
I agree that charging him isn't a deterrent and that the harm is more theoretical than practical. At some point, negligence is sufficient that its bigger than the family.
 
Although it sounds lofty to say he did this to society, step back a minute. What actual harm did he do to society? He harmed his own granddaughter through recklessness at worst, but society wasn't really harmed in any tangible sense that is repaired by locking the man up. Prosecutors often see the world as black and white, and it simply isn't. There is no purpose served by bringing manslaughter charges in a case like this one.
What actual harm? We will never know as the child will not get to grow up. Maybe she WAS the person to cure cancer, first woman to Mars, author of a book that will change the world. We just will never know. There is a consequence to everything.

I think if we look at the five stages of grief we will understand the need for the lawyer. The first stage is
Denial. By hiring a lawyer they are saying its someone else fault. That may be the only way they can get through the next few days, weeks, even months. If putting blame on the cruise line brings them peace for just a few hours then where is the harm. I'm sure any judge looking at the situation will shut the case down and then they can go begin to move on. The whole situation is sad, very sad. I hope they find the healing they need.
 


What actual harm did he do to society? He harmed his own granddaughter through recklessness at worst, but society wasn't really harmed

I don't proclaim to know what other's think but I would guess that the dead granddaughter would disagree with you. We will never know the extent the harm to society was because the little girl's contributions to the world were cut short by someone who was entrusted with her care/custody.

There is no purpose served by bringing manslaughter charges

That's one opinion. Another opinion is that if your conduct results in the injury/death of another, you shall be held accountable according to the law. If an investigation determines his conduct meets the elements of the crime, I would expect his case to be forwarded to a grand jury for indictment just as it would be for anyone else. We don't only charge/convict/sentence people as deterrence. There is also the punitive point in it. From seeing the family statements, it appears there is no acceptance of responsibility which is bothersome.
 
Just read a couple news articles. They say the grandfather put her on a ledge where ‘there should have been glass’ so she could see out. And there was no glass and then she was gone. From the pictures I have seen, there is no “ledge” all along the wall of windows/ glass is there? The ledge was created because of the open window. Correct? Sounds like covering up the facts and blame shifting to me.
 
Just read a couple news articles. They say the grandfather put her on a ledge where ‘there should have been glass’ so she could see out. And there was no glass and then she was gone. From the pictures I have seen, there is no “ledge” all along the wall of windows/ glass is there? The ledge was created because of the open window. Correct? Sounds like covering up the facts and blame shifting to me.

Correct. The “ledge” is the couple of inches where the window opens. They are designed to open, and the glass is tinted so that you can see where there is and is not glass. It is even more obvious when you are next to it than in the picture I posted from across the deck above.

It would be like sitting your toddler in an open window of your house - minus the sill that is probably inside and outside. It is NOTHING like the padded seats in windows on Disney that a) are designed to be window seats and b) at windows NOT designed to open.
 
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