The Royal St. Christopher and Nevis Police Force announced at the end of last week that officials discovered at least 19 dead bodies aboard a fishing boat that was floating off the coast of Nevis, an island in the Caribbean Sea that’s part of the West Indies. There is no word yet what happened to the people who were aboard the vessel, but there are some clues.
“The St. Kitts-Nevis Defence Force (SKNDF) Coast Guard Base received a report of a vessel drifting southwest of Nevis between the hours of 11AM and 12PM on January 29th, 2025,” reads the press release from the Royal St. Christopher and Nevis Police Force. “The SKNDF responded accordingly and towed the vessel to the Coast Guard base on St. Kitts, where it was dry-docked to facilitate further investigation.”
“Upon arrival, Police officers observed a total of nineteen (19) deceased persons onboard,” the press release continues. “Initial assessments indicate that the vessel had been at sea for a lengthy period based on their advanced stages of decomposition. All occupants were determined to have been deceased before the vessel entering St. Kitts and Nevis territorial waters. Further, identification documents found aboard suggest that some deceased individuals originated from Mali, West Africa.”
Police Commissioner James Sutton told The Associated Press that officials are still trying to determine the exact number of people who died onboard and then identify them, which is difficult due to the corpses’ advanced stage of decomposition. Sutton also provided some insight into the boat.
“It was a fishing vessel, which is not typically found in the Caribbean,” Sutton said. “We are not certain, but we believe that this vessel originated off the West African coast.”
See the police force’s social-media announcement about the dead bodies found on a random boat off the coast of Nevis here: