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Teen boy dies after falling from Royal Caribbean cruise ship

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Officials say a teenager from the South Pacific died after falling from a cruise ship onto a pier in Haiti.

The Sun Sentinel reports the Broward Medical Examiner’s Office on Monday announced 16-year-old Laurent Mercer’s death. He’d been on a seven-day Caribbean trip with his family when he died Friday.

Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas was docked at Labadee, Haiti, where the company owns a private beach. Officials say Mercer apparently didn’t have his room card, attempted to enter his eighth-floor room from an adjacent balcony, but lost his footing and fell.

Local authorities responded. The body was turned over to the Broward Medical Examiner’s Office when the ship returned Sunday to Port Everglades.

The teen was from the French island collectivity Wallis and Futuna.

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