The father of the 20-year-old passenger who jumped off a Royal Caribbean cruise ship last Thursday in a reportedly drunken, impulsive leap believes his son is still alive nearly a week later.
Francel Parker, dad of missing Levion Parker, told The Daily Sun that he believes his child — whom he called a master diver — is still alive in the waters off the Bahamas.
“As soon as he went off the side, I prayed over him. I was confident the prayers I said over my son were heard. I stand on the word of God. I believe he is alive,” Francel Parker said to the local Florida paper Wednesday.
The US Coast Guard called off its search for the North Port man a day earlier.
The younger Parker allegedly jumped off the 18-story Liberty of the Seas ship at around 4 a.m. in front of his helpless dad and younger brother after getting into an argument with his father, witnesses previously told The Post.
But Francel, who runs an AC business in Port Charlotte, told the local newspaper that he wasn’t arguing with Levion and that his son wasn’t trying to take his own life.
He said Levion is a skilled diver who works on a commercial fishing boat and is demanding to know how his underage son was given alcohol on the four-day cruise to Cuba and the Bahamas’ Grand Inagua Island.
“We don’t drink,” Francel said. “I’d like to know how my son was served so much alcohol.”
Another passenger onboard the cruise who witnessed Levion’s heart-stopping jump said that Francel was “fussing at him for being drunk.”
Bryan Sims told The Post that he was hanging out with Levion and his 18-year-old brother Seth in the hotel tub of the ship in the early hours of April 4 before going their separate ways.
After Sims had used the restroom and dried off, he bumped into the brothers and their father near the elevators.
“As we were walking from the hot tub back to the elevators, his dad and brother were walking towards us. His dad was fussing at him for being drunk, I guess,” Sims said of the moment before Parker jumped.
“When we got to them, he said to his dad, ‘I’ll fix this right now.’ And he jumped out the window in front of us all,” Sims said, calling what he witnessed “surreal.”
Another cruise guest described the frantic chaos that followed.
“There was a lot of yelling, and the crew was alerted immediately,” Deborah Morrison, told The Post.
“His family was horrified. Just beside themselves. I can’t even begin to imagine what they’re going through.”
Francel told The Daily Sun that he threw six life rings off the ship in hopes of saving his son before the massive boat was able to come to a stop about 20 minutes later.
Royal Caribbean said it “immediately” launched search boats to look for the 20-year-old and alerted the Coast Guard, which later took over the search.
At least 406 people on major cruise lines and ferries have gone overboard between 2000 and 2024, according to data collected by retired professor and cruise industry researcher Ross Klein.
Death rates among overboard passengers and crew members vary significantly among cruise lines, but even the safest cruise companies were only able to rescue about 40% of people who fall or jump off the ship, Klein told the Washington Post in July.
