IN - Grandfather charged in cruise ship death of toddler Chloe Wiegand #7

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$12,000 is a lot of money for some people. But we don’t really know how much they paid for the trip. The estimate is based on balcony cabins. There are much lower priced cabins without balconies (or windows for that matter).

AW is a police officer and KW is an attorney. Both pretty well paid professions. Is the assumption that they were hurting for money just because they had a fund raising page for their sons’ hockey trip? If you’ve ever been on a RCCL cruise you’d know that there are plenty of people who would appear to earn a lot less than a cop and an attorney filling the ships. Even in high season. Strikes me as odd that you’d be concerned with how a professional family afforded a 7 cruise on a ship with thousands of other people. JMO as they say.

No concern. Observation. Curiosity. They might sacrifice elsewhere. Saving on vehicles by driving beaters. Clipping coupons. Shopping thrift stores. From the family photos, they appear to have a beautiful home. Take advantage of social activities. Games. Outings. Chloe’s clothing is precious. I don’t know about a foodie, but definitely a clothes horse. Clothes Pony.
We don’t know how they manage to provide for an apparently great life on their incomes. No one bemoans their life. Or is envious of their life. AW might work overtime every chance he gets. Or a second job periodically. We don’t know if KW is working. Apparently before she was with the DA’s office. That’s the point. We’re asking.
We do know they have internet sites to raise funds for themselves. For SA. And that intrigues us. Many of us feel like this speaks to the type of people they are. Funds for tragedies usually are set up by friends or other family. Neighbors. And it’s a one time deal. They had a site for the son’s hockey trip prior to this cruise. Did they have other sites? No sleuthing so we don’t know.

Americans are some of the MOST generous people on earth. Volunteer hours logged by Americans way and by far outpace other countries. Maybe if they hadn’t traveled before AND the son needed help with funding his hockey trip, I’d feel different. It seems that they can afford a beautiful home, active social life, multiple cruising vacations, in whatever cabins they choose, yet rely on raising money on the internet for their son’s hockey trip. Or Chloe’s funeral. Yet cremate her. Or SA’s criminal defense. I doubt $5000 pays for much of SA defense costs. Travel and hotels. Sure. But apparently his attorney is preparing a mock up. Hiring experts. That’s not cheap.
Go Fu nd Me is just another piece of the family tragedy.
Like your very descriptive posts about motive, intent. The distinction between the two and how they apply in general to litigation, was very important. At least to me. We all kind of sort of know these things, but reading a concise and very accurate differentiation, is extremely helpful in reviewing cases. He INTENDED to lift her up. He INTENDED to put her over, at least
it appears that way from some videos. Did he intend to drop her? Motive. And to ask that question, makes way more sense to me in determining his criminal guilt or innocence. Even though it’s not required by law. And of which crime. Why would he do that? I have several opinions. May be true. May be false. But pinning down motive would help me in jury deliberations. The entire picture is important. Bc if we miss a piece that is game changer, deal killer, we’ve missed our opportunity to render the correct verdict. The more we know, the better the chances are that the correct verdict is rendered.
That’s why we love to read what MW is describing in his pleadings. Re-enacting the scene. We nit pick everything to death. What’s correct. What’s wrong. What’s possible. What’s impossible. Improbable. We are investigating all angles and leaving no stone overturned in our quest. I think that’s what WS posters do the best. Group effort. Group discussions.
By filing the civil lawsuit, they have put themselves under the microscope of public scrutiny. They are also under the microscope of the RCCL defense team. Almost everything is fair game as long as it can reasonably lead to the discovery of relevant information. How many lawsuits they’ve filed in the past. SA driving records. Employment. Health records of Chloe maybe and SA for sure. Tax returns. It’s a wide and deep search. And behind the scenes, RCCL will be checking South Bend records on the family. I won’t speculate what they will search for, but I guarantee the search will be thorough. It could discover compromising information. Skeletons. Who knows what.
That’s the nature of the beast. Kind of like if you run for a political office. Expect the worst information to be dug up by your opponent.
Hopefully, I’ve explained my position clearly so that you can follow my logic. I can get twisted up by emotions. But it’s important to keep a clear mind. Emotions have little to do with the facts.
 
Some really great posts here; thank you all. This has been on my mind as well.

(not a lawyer just a layperson and just my own thoughts/opinions) From the video released (see post #592) I think it could be argued that SA in fact knew the window was, in fact, open when he leans over for 8 seconds as shown. It could be then argued that it was his intent to place Chloe in a dangerous position when he placed her on/beyond the guardrail. The proverbial “everyday man/woman” would and quite correctly consider this to have placed Chloe in extreme jeopardy with high risk of serious injury or loss of life. So (once again JMO) whatever his intention was to place her there does not matter. The purposeful and intentional act of placing Chloe on/beyond the guardrail was so inherently dangerous in and of itself.

Something just seems so off here. What was the real motive behind this action?

We’re working on it.
 
I can see the sun shining on her where everything else is in shadow.

a2c38ed4-f240-486f-ae01-12c65f03d961-jpeg.228932
One thing I never noticed before is how much his upper body bulk takes up the available open window space imo DCA7DEF7-D080-47F8-81EF-3AF5C28756A3.jpegThis is from my cruise - it’s sideways but you can see the opening just isn’t that big - he used a lot of effort to get her out that window IMO
 
No. I’m not. From mobile homes to homes in lower working class or less than desirable neighborhoods. The rust belt is full of them. Actually, if you look around I bet any major city has houses that need a new owner. But are reasonably priced. I’m not saying a McMansion. Or in Granger. But for $12,000.00 there’s places to be called home. With or without elbow grease. Soap and water. Paint. Some basic carpentry skills. Neighborhoods targeted for redevelopment. Tax sales.
My point was $12000 is a pile of money.

ETA: This wasn’t a once in a lifetime trip. Where someone sold a house or won the lottery. We know they’ve sailed before, on Disney. We don’t know how many times or with whom. We’re wondering how they afford the vacation dollars in high season.
ETA2: We know that $20,000 was raised via a social site as reported here. The funeral may or may not have been paid by SBPD. But she was cremated and is in an urn. So all the remaining funds are poised to be used for a different purpose.
This family has a peculiar mindset - they'll take expensive vacations (fun!) but use crowdfunding for expenses such as their son's hockey, their daughter's funeral and their grandpa's criminal trial (not so fun).
 
The reason MW focuses so much on what SA thought is because a major part of their claim is that the design of the windows created a hidden danger. MW contends that the design, a seemingly closed wall of glass (he refers to it that way for a reason) puts people at ease. They perceive it as a fully glazed wall. It puts people in a different state of mind then if they were standing next to just a waist height railing with no glass beyond it. So MW is arguing that SA, believing there to be a full wall of glass had no reason to believe CW was in danger when he put her on the rail and leaned over with her. MW further claims that had there been a simple warning that this "hidden danger" existed SA would have been warned off of placing CW into a dangerous situation that he otherwise did not know existed. That's why what SA thought is key to his argument.

MW also needs to show that RCCL should have been aware that the operable windows posed a danger. Hence is insistance that FotS wasn't meeting current safety standards. RCCL can't be negligent unless it can be shown that they knew or should have known that a dangerous condition existed.


I don’t see the wall of windows as a hidden danger because of the railing in front of it. He also should’ve read the ship’s rules about staying off the railings. If the windows could not be opened, why was a railing there at all?
 
I don't think he intentionally dropped her from the window but I wonder if he gained some sort of thrill from placing her in such a dangerous situation , her life was in his hands literally. I think he is so
arrogant that he thought he couldn't drop her.
ITA and I’ve said it before - I don’t think this is the first high space he played this “game” and I think it was a catch type toss and she slipped
JMO
 
I recall you saying this before. Somewhere I saw /read that he tried this on another floor but was stopped.
Way way way back in July I read the crew was coming to stop him because people by him saw him pass her through the window but they didn’t get there in time apparently - 34 seconds she was outside that window - how many toss ups did he do?
JMO
 
Way way way back in July I read the crew was coming to stop him because people by him saw him pass her through the window but they didn’t get there in time apparently - 34 seconds she was outside that window - how many toss ups did he do?
JMO
I read it also. It was talked about on the first (deleted) thread IMO.
 
Way way way back in July I read the crew was coming to stop him because people by him saw him pass her through the window but they didn’t get there in time apparently - 34 seconds she was outside that window - how many toss ups did he do?
JMO
Wow, if true that's an absolute bombshell isn't it? Anyone know where they are in the discovery process for the criminal trial? At some point the list of witnesses and their statements to LE are documented right? And they are made available to the defense, and to some extent to the public? Would MW have access to the discovery artifacts via the criminal defense lawyer? Credible, detailed eyewitness accounts, especially if consistent and corroborating, would be the death knell to the family's side in both cases, true?
 
MW 's strategy in attempting to prove RCCL was negligent seems to rest mostly on his assertion that the ship's design violates some safety standard. RCCL's defense seems to be 2-fold:
1. In the entire history of this particular design, no one has ever fallen or been dropped through those windows. The number should be compelling: look not just at FOS but all her sister ships of the same design, and I expect you;d find that over perhaps 13 years, several million passengers have safely coexisted with those windows, a perfect safety record. Until one unbelievably foolish adult came along...
2. Read the official written safety standards that actually apply to cruise ships. No one will be able to find a single standard that FOS violated.

I find it puzzling that MW spends so much attention on what SA "thought". I have never understood why that matters. Both civil and criminal complaints are negligence complaints. To prove negligence "what I thought" is irrelevant, right? It's all about what did you do, and would a reasonable person do that? Yes or No? There is no dispute about what SA actually did, so all this talk about what SA thought is a misdirection campaign, to deflect attention from his actions, which I expect very few normal people would find reasonable.

MW has to move the conversation away from what SA said (because he has made many public statements from the moments of the accident through the CBS interview that can be considered to be in conflict with each other) and what SA did (which is on the video for all the world to see). What he thought is all we have here, bolstered by "color blind" and "lost his balance."

The same thing with his crazy measurements photos in his answer. This is to tie RCCL in knots trying to discredit and answer those crazy numbers and reconcile them with the actual technical specs of the ship and the furniture, etc.

It's all to confuse the jury and throw the scent off of SA.
 
Back when the video was first leaked, we talked about the guy who had been standing in front of the open window and we commented that it appeared that SA was waiting for him to move from that spot. As we stated at the time, there is a wall of windows, so why would he need to wait for that spot to open up to do what he did?

He knew the window was open.
 
Thanks. I was trying to remember where in Indiana they were from. At the moment, flights from O'Hare to San Juan are crazy high for the same dates in July that I checked from Indianapolis. $854 per person! As for the BOGO sale - sadly, no matter what sale Royal Caribbean claims to be running, the price always comes out about the same. I know someone mentioned that CW would have been at a very discounted rate. Her age was accounted for in the pricing I gave earlier.



If not using a credit card or Uplift, the deposit is $250 per person. Then you can pay as much or as little as you want on a regular basis as long as the cruise is paid in full 90 days prior to departure.
So, if they planned a year in advance with full deposits, that would still have been about $525 a month just for the cruise portion.

I personally find it distasteful that they spent this amount of money on a cruise while holding their hands out asking others to pay for their son's trip. JMOO (Don't get me wrong, I spend plenty of money on cruises I probably shouldn't be taking. BUT, 1. it's part of my job and 2. I don't turn around and ask anyone else for money.)

I haven't finished reading all of the posts, so I apologize if this has been covered already, we are going on a RC cruise in March (we leave in 30 days but who is counting :) ) leaving out of Galveston. I looked at some leaving out of San Juan but the flights to get there were outrageously priced. We live in Nebraska, so to find any cheap flight anywhere is next to impossible, but some of the flights were more than double what we paid for the cruise itself. I even started looking at flights out of Kansas City.

We got a REALLY good deal on the cruise itself - kids sail free and 60% off the second guest, so our 7 night cruise was less than $1,500 for an ocean view room.

ETA: that’s for our family of 4. 2 adults and 2 kids.
 
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Rails at Windows. Why?
I don’t see the wall of windows as a hidden danger because of the railing in front of it. He also should’ve read the ship’s rules about staying off the railings. If the windows could not be opened, why was a railing there at all?
@SuzDuJour :) bbm Cruise ships' rails are not just to help prevent ppl from falling out windows. In rough seas rails also function as a handhold, so ppl can keep their balance in standing or walking, or in very rough weather, keep themselves from being tossed around. jmo
 
MW 's strategy in attempting to prove RCCL was negligent seems to rest mostly on his assertion that the ship's design violates some safety standard. RCCL's defense seems to be 2-fold:
1. In the entire history of this particular design, no one has ever fallen or been dropped through those windows. The number should be compelling: look not just at FOS but all her sister ships of the same design, and I expect you;d find that over perhaps 13 years, several million passengers have safely coexisted with those windows, a perfect safety record. Until one unbelievably foolish adult came along...
2. Read the official written safety standards that actually apply to cruise ships. No one will be able to find a single standard that FOS violated.

I find it puzzling that MW spends so much attention on what SA "thought". I have never understood why that matters. Both civil and criminal complaints are negligence complaints. To prove negligence "what I thought" is irrelevant, right? It's all about what did you do, and would a reasonable person do that? Yes or No? There is no dispute about what SA actually did, so all this talk about what SA thought is a misdirection campaign, to deflect attention from his actions, which I expect very few normal people would find reasonable.

For my own curiosity, I decided to look back at both Freedom and Voyager class ships, how long they've been sailing and ship capacity. Royal Caribbean ships normally sail at, or near capacity. But, in my calculations, I subtracted a bit from that capacity. Of course this does not account for weeks the ships were in dry dock, etc., but it's close.
Freedom Class
  • Freedom of the Seas, in service for 14 years, average 3600 pax per week X 52 weeks = 2,620,800 total passengers
  • Liberty of the Seas, in service for 13 years, same calc as above = 2,433,600 passengers
  • Independence of the Seas, in service for 12 years = 2,246,400 passengers
Total for Freedom class = 7,300,800

Voyager Class
  • Voyager of the Seas, in service for 21 years, average of 3100 pax per week = 3,276,000 total passengers
  • Explorer of the Seas, in service for 20 years = 3,224,000 total passengers
  • Adventure of the Seas, in service for 19 years = 3,062, 800 total passengers
  • Navigator of the Seas, in service for 18 years = 2, 901,600 total passengers
  • Mariner of the Seas, in service for 17 years = 2,740,400 total passengers
Voyager class total 15,204,800

22.5 million passengers - have managed to sail without anyone falling out one of these windows!
 
What Can/Will Witnesses Testify To?

Specifically ppl, either passengers or crew, on Deck 11.
1. Did they overhear anything, at the times below?
--- When KSW & KSW spoke, before she left, when SA began 'supervising.' Was a fam member there?
--- When SA & Chloe were in splash pad.
--- When SA squatted at column/pillar, w Chloe.
--- When SA crossed Squeeze bar area to window.
--- When SA & Chloe were at window.

2. Did any of them speak w either SA or Chloe at ^ times?
3. What did they see SA & Chloe do at the ^ times?


Woowhee, I wish we had vids of aaaaaall ^ w SA & Chloe.
 
I have stopped entertaining the narrative that SA did not know the window was open. That leads down a black hole of "how could he possibly not know that" and "could a color-blind person not know that". There is literally a VIDEO of him leaning over the railing and if his head wasn't physically out the window, it was so close to the frame that if there had been glass he would bump his face on it. I've been on many RC cruises, you can absolutely 100% tell an open from a shut window, it's not even close. The focus should be on - what was SA doing lifting a toddler up to an open window 11 stories up? Why was he playing a "game" with her in front of an open window? The PR investigation seems to have determined it was reckless (not intentional murder). And ok even if the family wants to defend him like he wouldn't hurt CW on purpose, his actions were completely stupid, reckless, and got her killed. Why are they not suing him instead of RCCL? Maybe once they found out the facts, the decided to sue RCCL b/c that's where the big money is, and told SA he has to go along with this as penance for killing SA. That I could believe more readily than he didn't know the window was open!
 
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