Royal Caribbean crew members are accused of stuffing a passenger's body in a drinks refrigerator and carrying on with the voyage after the man reportedly died following an extended bout of heavy drinking, according to the family's lawyer. Michael Virgil, a 35-year-old dad from California, had spent the day drinking on the cruise when tragedy struck.
Virgil's final hours were extremely chaotic and tragic. He was served an astounding 33 drinks in a single day before he died in December 2024, according to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by his fiancée. The cruise ship security detained Virgil after he got violently drunk, and he ended up dying while in their custody.
Almost a Murder
An autopsy later revealed just how drunk he was as his blood alcohol level measured between 0.182 and 0.186 percent, more than double the legal limit for driving, according to a report obtained by the Daily Mail.
Virgil's fiancée, Connie Aguilar, claims that after security restrained him, crew members injected him with a sedative — something she believes ultimately caused his death.
Aguilar, who was on the trip with Virgil and their 7-year-old autistic son, begged the ship's staff to turn back to Long Beach after the horrifying incident. However, the cruise line refused, leaving her and her child to endure the rest of the voyage in shock and grief, according to her attorney.
"They would not do it," attorney Kevin Haynes told the Mail.
"They put Michael in a refrigerator and continued the cruise for multiple days."
Virgil became increasingly aggressive after staff allegedly kept serving him almost three dozen drinks under the ship's unlimited alcohol package — though it's unclear how many he actually drank, according to the wrongful-death lawsuit.
When he eventually stumbled out of the bar, extremely intoxicated and disoriented, he couldn't locate his cabin. That confusion quickly spiraled into fury, and he began lashing out, allegedly threatening and attacking both crew members and other passengers as he wandered the ship.
Losing His Temper Before Death
Crew members forced Virgil to the ground, stood on his body, injected him with the sedative Haloperidol, and even doused him with multiple cans of pepper spray, the lawsuit claims. Virgil was pinned down for about three minutes before being handcuffed and taken to the ship's medical center, according to the autopsy from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office.
He was still alive at that point.
Investigators noted that while his blood alcohol level wasn't high enough to kill him outright, alcohol can slow breathing, reduce coordination, and make it harder for someone to react when they're struggling — especially during a forceful restraint like the one he experienced.
The lawsuit says Virgil died because his body was starved of oxygen. It claims he suffered "severe hypoxia," meaning he couldn't breathe properly, which led to respiratory failure, his heart becoming unstable, and eventually a full cardiac arrest. The injuries were so serious that his death was officially classified as a homicide, according to the suit.
"The first domino that fell in terms of causing his death was mechanical asphyxiation, and that is where approximately five, maybe more, Royal Caribbean employees were trying to restrain him by putting their full body weight on him," Haynes told the Daily Mail. "And they did that for three minutes."
Haynes said the way the father died reminded him of the George Floyd. "Everyone remembers that very tragic story with George Floyd, and this is similar in the sense that they suppressed someone against their will, restrained him and caused him to stop being able to breathe," he said.
