Utah Woman’s Husband Accused of Murdering Her Aboard Alaska-Bound Cruise Ship
The husband of a Utah woman who died aboard an Alaska-bound cruise ship on Tuesday night has been charged with murder, PEOPLE confirms.
An FBI spokesperson tells PEOPLE that Kenneth Manzanares faces a federal murder charge in the death of 39-year-old Kristy Manzanares, who died on the Emerald Princess cruise ship after an alleged domestic incident.
In a statement, Princess Cruises told PEOPLE that “a domestic dispute occurred onboard Emerald Princess at approximately 9:00 p.m. on July 25, resulting in the death of a 39-year-old female guest from Utah.”
Manzanares has not yet made an initial court appearance, the FBI spokesperson says. It was not immediately clear if he has retained an attorney.
The ship set off from Seattle on Sunday on a week-long trip but was diverted to Juneau, Alaska, where it docked hours early as a result of the incident, CBS News reports. The Emerald Princess boat was carrying 3,400 passengers and 1,100 crew members, according to CBS.
“They just said, ‘Security breach! Security breach!’ ” one witness, Jen Larson, told ABC News. “We could tell by the sound of his voice that it was something really scary and really serious.”
Other witnesses told ABC that they heard a woman “screaming for her life.”
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Larsen said that a member of her family saw Manzanares’ young daughter distraught just after the incident.
“She was just really scared,” Larson recalled. “She said, ‘I just want to go and see my mom! I just want to see my mom! What’s happening?’ ”
One man told KTVA that he and his wife were two floors above the site of the incident.
“There was a lot of yelling started up again between men, fighting you know, somebody hurt somebody’s sister and it was a family dispute,” Charles Rowlen alleged.
He recalled his wife seeing a bruised, bloodied man near the boat’s rail, threatening to jump.
“She thought he was going to jump over the rail, and at one point he put his hand on the rail and set his rear on it,” Rowlen told the station. “She started yelling, ‘Get back in!’ ”
