FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Investigators have determined that a man who went overboard on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship Friday jumped off after a fight with his partner.
Broward Sheriff's Office homicide detectives are reinforcing what Royal Caribbean has maintained all along -- that a passenger on the Oasis of the Seas jumped off the seventh deck of the ship early Friday morning.
An attorney for the husband of Bernardo Elbaz, whom BSO spokeswoman Gina Carter identified as Bernardo Garcia Teixeira, 31, claimed that he fell off the ship after a heated altercation with the ship's security staff.
"Royal Caribbean is saying this was a domestic dispute and a suicide," attorney Michael Winkleman said at a news conference Saturday. "It was anything but that."
Winkleman said Royal Caribbean security guards got into an altercation with Garcia Teixeira in his cabin in the moments before he fell off the balcony. Winkleman said Garcia Teixeira was taunted by Royal Caribbean crew members at a bar on the ship late Thursday night because he was gay.
"I can see how from the media perspective Royal Caribbean would rather (take a position that) this is the scenario where someone jumped overboard rather than something directly implicating their security staff," Winkleman said.
Royal Caribbean spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez said in a statement that the security staff was called to the passenger's room after a neighboring guest complained about a domestic dispute on the balcony. Martinez said the domestic dispute was loud enough to be heard from several staterooms away.
"The room was in a state of disarray, and both lamps in the room had been broken," she said. "Our officers interviewed the guests separately about their dispute, as is standard procedure. The officers were not in the room when the guest chose to jump off his balcony."
Carter said detectives reviewed video evidence of the couple's interactions with the ship's security in which Garcia Teixeira can be heard saying that he was planning to jump overboard. In the recording, Garcia Teixeira can be seen running to the balcony alone. It also shows his partner, Erik Elbaz, 34, run after him, followed by the ship's security.
However, Elbaz told reporters Monday that there was never a dispute between the men.
"The cruise line has blood on their hands, and those workers have blood on their hands," Elbaz said.
Elbaz said the taunts from Royal Caribbean employees infuriated his husband.
"He was completely inconsolable," Elbaz said.
Carter said Garcia Teixeira jumped from the seventh-floor balcony and struck a metal support for a lifeboat on the fifth deck. He clung to the ship as staff members tried to rescue him, but he fell into the water moments later.
"Our officers responded professionally and appropriately to the incident in the stateroom," Martinez said. "In addition, other security officers and crew risked their own lives in an attempt to rescue the guest from the lifeboat rigging where he had fallen."
Cellphone video from another passenger on the cruise ship captured Elbaz screaming for help.
"Bernardo was holding on for his life," Elbaz said. "He was reaching out for assistance."
Elbaz said he and his husband recorded cellphone video moments before Garcia Teixeira went overboard, proving that they were upset about their treatment by the crew.
"Bernardo did not need to die," Elbaz said.
The U.S. Coast Guard suspended its search for Garcia Teixeira on Saturday, the same day that the ship returned to Port Everglades.
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