Police in South Bend, Indiana, were among the mourners at a funeral service for the daughter of one of their own on July 15.
Eighteen-month-old Chloe Wiegand died earlier this month after falling out of a window on the Royal Caribbean cruise ship, Freedom of the Seas, on July 7.
Several officers from the South Bend Police Department, where the little girl’s father is an officer, attended the funeral, CNN affiliate WSBT reports.
The department shared its condolences with the family on Twitter shortly after the tragedy was announced.
Statement from SBPD regarding the tragic news coming out of Puerto Rico involving the family of one of our officers. #southbend pic.twitter.com/xjyDSgmV8X
— South Bend Police (@southbendpolice) July 8, 2019
Multiple officers at the funeral carried carnations, WSBT reported. One officer carried a hand-drawn picture of Chloe.
The mayor and the St. Joseph County prosecutor also attended the funeral, WSBT said.
Chloe fell to her death from deck 11 of the Freedom of the Seas ship, while it was docked in San Juan, Puerto Rico, according to José Carmona, a spokesman for the local Port Authority. She had traveled to San Juan from the mainland with her parents, siblings and four grandparents.
UPDATE: A local family is grieving after a toddler fell to her death from a cruise ship docked in Puerto Rico. Now the family attorney is speaking out.
— https://t.co/szLQo2gf28— WSBT (@WSBT) July 9, 2019
Chloe and her grandfather, Sam Anello, were “in the water park on the ship, which is designed for the kids—kids are meant to be there,” an attorney for the family, Michael Winkleman, said last week. “And there’s a whole wall of windows. And the grandfather thought that this window was closed. It turns out, we’ve come to learn, that … passengers can open these windows.”
Winkleman said the child’s grandfather placed Chloe on the wood railing before the wall of windows, believing she would bang on the glass just like she does at her brother’s hockey games, “and the next thing he knows, she’s gone.”
Winkleman said that after speaking with the grandfather, who was “hysterically crying,” he believes the fall was a “preventable incident.”
Freedom of the Seas
Winkleman noted that the Freedom of the Seas ship, which made its maiden voyage in 2006, is older, and none of the newer ships have similar windows that can be opened in the same way.
“I think Royal Caribbean needs to answer these questions: Why would you ever in a kid’s play area put windows that passengers can open? I mean, we’ve all had that experience where someone walks into a glass sliding door thinking it’s not there. This is the inverse of that. It was reasonable for Sam the grandfather to think that this was all glass because from his perspective it was all glass.”
UPDATE: “He (grandfather) was literally telling me the story through tears, and he literally thought there was glass there.”
The attorney for Chloe Wiegand’s family speaks after the cruise ship tragedy. He says this could have been prevented. pic.twitter.com/gi57EJt75d
— Kim Shine (@KimShineWNDU) July 9, 2019
Ultimately, the family does not want this incident to be “just about tragedy,” said their attorney, who described Chloe as “a sweet, loving girl.” Instead, the Wiegands are hoping to make sure something like this never happens to another family.
