2 US Security Officers Found Dead on Maersk Alabama
THE SEYCHELLES Police confirmed that Jeffrey Reynolds and Mark Kennedy, two male US security officers on board container ship Maersk Alabama were discovered dead on the ship moored in Port Victoria late in the afternoon of Tuesday 18th of February.
Their bodies were found in Kennedy's cabin by a colleague who went to check on him at around 4.30 pm yesterday.
Both aged 44, Reynolds and Kennedy worked for Trident Security Firm USA. They were part of a ship crew of 24 members who arrived in Port Victoria on Sunday 16 Feb. The Maersk Alabama, a major merchant ship, was supposed to leave Port Victoria yesterday.
A postmortem will be carried out this week in order to establish the cause of their sudden deaths while the Police investigates the possible circumstances which lead to these incidents.
The case was reported to the Seychelles Police at around 5 pm yesterday by Maersk Alabama's shipping agents Hunt Deltel.
The Maersk Alabama was twice attacked by Somali pirates in seven months in 2009.
Pirates first hijacked the Maersk Alabama in April 2009 and took ship captain Richard Phillips hostage, holding him at gunpoint in a lifeboat for five days. Navy SEAL sharpshooters freed Phillips while killing three pirates in a daring nighttime attack.
The second pirate attack was in November 2009 and an on-board security team repelled the attack by using evasive maneuvers, small-arms fire and a Long Range Acoustic Device, which can beam earsplitting alarm tones.
Based on the true story of the 2009 Maersk Alabama hijacking, the film Captain Phillips, directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Tom Hanks and Barkhad Abdi, was released last year.
Source: Seychelles Police and The Seychelles Nation
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