A makeshift boat carrying an estimated 60 people capsized west of Puerto Rico after a machete fight, leaving two dead and survivors adrift more than 12 hours before rescue crews arrived.
U.S. Coast Guard crews pulled at least 40 people from open water several miles off a tiny uninhabited island west of Puerto Rico after their vessel went down, officials said Monday, as the Associated Press reported two people were found dead and rescue work continued into the evening.
Survivors told authorities roughly 60 people had been aboard. The boat went over late Sunday. By Monday around noon a passing vessel near Mona Island spotted people in the water and called for help, getting four out before Coast Guard teams took over about 10 miles offshore.
The group had spent more than 12 hours in the water without life vests. A Coast Guard spokeswoman said she did not have information on where the people were from.
Machete fight sent people overboard without life vests
The Coast Guard said the makeshift boat capsized late Sunday following a fight in which people were severely injured by a machete. That violence pushed the group into the water. No one had life vests on when they jumped.
Fox News reported that Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations had detected a vessel with about 40 migrants near Desecheo Island, feeding into the Coast Guard response in the same stretch of water.
The location sits in the Mona Passage, the stretch of sea between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico that migrants have long used to reach U.S. territory and nearby islands. It is a known hazard. Overloaded boats, bad weather, and violence turn crossings lethal with little warning.
Similar maritime smuggling runs keep testing U.S. crews, as when border agents stopped a boat carrying 13 Chinese nationals off Florida.
Hours in the water before help arrived
A boat passing near Mona Island first saw the survivors around noon Monday and raised the alarm. Its crew helped get four people out of the water right away. Coast Guard teams then expanded the search and recovery, bringing the known rescue total to at least 40 while recovering two bodies.
Efforts were still underway Monday evening. With survivors putting the original number near 60, the gap between those accounted for and those still missing remained an open question as crews worked the scene.
Deadly outcomes at sea are not rare when overloaded craft fail. A boat capsizing near the Statue of Liberty previously left a mother and her infant daughter dead and brought charges against the captain.
Haiti’s collapse keeps feeding the Mona Passage
The Coast Guard did not confirm nationalities in this case. Reporting placed the voyage in the larger flow of people leaving Hispaniola for Puerto Rico and other islands. Gang violence has displaced a record 1.5 million people across Haiti. United Nations figures showed more than 3,050 people killed there from January to June. Armed men control an estimated 70 percent of Port-au-Prince and large areas beyond the capital.
That chaos pushes more people onto unseaworthy boats. Last week police in the Turks and Caicos Islands detained a makeshift boat carrying 60 Haitian migrants. In a separate June operation, authorities held another 240 migrants from Haiti near that archipelago.
In June 2022, 11 Haitian girls and women were buried in Puerto Rico after an overloaded boat capsized northwest of the territory. The pattern is consistent: desperate departures, crowded vessels, and high odds of disaster once the boats hit open water.
Coast Guard crews also handle other high-risk intercepts at sea, including the capture of a long-time fugitive on a sailboat after two decades on the run.
Rescue numbers and the missing
Officials put the confirmed rescue figure at least at 40, with two dead. Survivors’ estimate of 60 aboard left room for several people still unaccounted for while searches continued. The spokeswoman had no origin details to release. No names of the dead or the injured were made public in the initial accounts.
The machete wounds that preceded the jump added another layer of harm. Authorities described severe injuries from the fight but released no further medical updates on those victims among the rescued.
Tragedies at sea keep turning up across the region, whether from vessels in distress or other losses over water, including cases where families have been found dead after crashes near the Bahamas.
Front-line Coast Guard and Border Protection teams are left to pull people from the water after the fact. The crossings continue because the conditions that launch them have not been fixed, and the route remains open enough for smugglers and desperate passengers to keep trying.
When order collapses at the source and weak enforcement leaves sea lanes unsecured, the bill is paid in bodies recovered 10 miles off Mona Island.
