Toddler drowns after parents cooking dinner leave her in harness on boat

A toddler drowned while her parents cooked dinner aboard a catamaran during a family vacation in Fiji. 

“By the time we could find her, it was too late,” a friend of the family wrote on a donation page to cover the costs of flights back from Fiji and a funeral for the deceased. 

“Māhina was a beautiful, happy, smiling child who loved the water and life on the boat,” the family friend wrote on the page. 

“To the beloved Māhina, may you forever live in peace, splashing with joy somewhere in the sea.”

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The 13-month-old child, named Māhina Toki, played on the deck of the boat while her parents cooked dinner in the galley. Mark and Kiri, the parents, had believed that Māhina remained safely strapped into a harness on the boat’s deck and was watching a movie at the time.

When the parents returned to the deck, they could not find their daughter and searched frantically before finding her floating in the sea, The New Zealand Herald reported. 

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A Fiji Police spokeswoman said Māhina had likely “worked free” from the harness and ended up in the water. The police will continue to investigate the death. 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was aware of the death and offering what assistance it could to the family. 

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The Toki family had sailed to Fiji from their home on Great Barrier Island in New Zealand, arriving Wednesday. When they discovered their daughter had fallen into the water, the couple rushed to shore seeking help but no one could revive her. 

A local resort manager said the death was a shock to many of the island’s residents. 

The owner of a sailing club in New Zealand told the Herald that sailors commonly tethered people to boats as a safety precaution, but she was unsure what happened in this “very sad” case. 

The New York Post reported that the donation page on Givealittle had already raised $18,000.