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Overboard Carnival Cruise Passenger Was Dad on Wedding Anniversary Trip

The father of three was just days away from his 15th wedding anniversary.

Thomas Gigler has been identified as the man who went overboard from the Carnival Panorama cruise ship. The 56-year-old father of three went overboard on September 18, off the coast of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, on the way to Long Beach, California, sparking a U.S. and Mexican Coast Guards search. His wife Michelle, 48, said Gigler went missing on Friday evening. By Saturday morning, she asked staff for help, so the crew announced his name over the PA system, issued a lockdown, and ordered passengers to their rooms. Passengers were on lockdown for an hour before CCTV cameras confirmed Gigler went overboard. The U.S. Coast Guard was alerted that afternoon, prompting it to dispatch a fixed-wing aircraft to aid the investigation. Gigler is a computer programmer who was traveling on the seven-night cruise with his wife Michelle and their three sons—ages 13, 11, and 9. He was supposed to celebrate his 15th wedding anniversary on Wednesday, September 23, according to his sister, Wendy Dowden, who said the couple was “getting along quite well.” But Dowden suspects a mental health crisis occurred. “He wasn’t in his right mind to have done this,” she said. The cruise ship arrived in California on September 20.