The ship ARM Cuauhtémoc — with 277 people on board, including 175 naval cadets — was on a good-will tour throughout the world.
Two crew members aboard a Mexican Navy sailing ship died on Saturday night when the vessel drifted into the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge, smashing its masts and rigging. The ship ARM Cuauhtémoc — with 277 people on board, including 175 naval cadets — was on a good-will tour throughout the world, which included a stop in New York.
At least 22 other crew members were injured in the crash, which was widely captured with harrowing videos on social media. The two who died of their injuries were a cadet, América Yamileth Sánchez Hernández, 20, and a sailor Adal Jair Maldonado Marcos, 23.
Rodolfo Hernández, Ms. Sánchez Hernández’s uncle, told reporters on Sunday that his niece had sent photos showing her in Central Park the day before the accident. When news of her death came, he said, “We broke down; we didn’t have the strength to bear it.”
It’s still unclear what caused the 300-foot ship to veer off course and hit the bridge.
A maritime expert told The New York Times that the Cuauhtémoc’s propellers may have been running in reverse. After being briefed on the accident, Senator Charles Schumer of New York said that the ship “did not use a tugboat’s assistance” and that the tugboat “pictured in widely posted videos was responding after the fact, not assisting before.”
On Monday, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico said in a news conference that the Mexican Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent U.S. agency responsible for investigating transportation accidents, were each looking into the crash to see “if it was a mechanical cause, if it was the tugboats, if it was a human error.”
