Man Who Jumped from Cruise Ship Identified, Was Father of 3 and on 15th Wedding Anniversary Trip with Wife
The mystery is no longer who jumped off a Carnival cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean.
The mystery is why.
Days after a passenger on the Carnival Panorama jumped from the ship’s 11th deck into the sea on Saturday, six days into the cruise, he was identified as Thomas Gigler, 56, of Redlands, California, according to the U.K. Daily Mail.
Gigler was aboard with his wife, Michelle, 48, and their three sons, aged 13, 11 and 9, when he was discovered missing Saturday morning.
The ship’s crew spent about four hours paging Gigler, but there was no response.
Thomas Gigler, 56, was six days into a Mexican Riviera cruise with his wife and three young sons – just days before their 15th wedding anniversary – when he went overboard from the Carnival Panorama. Passengers were locked in their rooms for hours during the search. He wasn’t…
— Tony Lane 🇺🇸 (@TonyLaneNV) September 22, 2026
When he did not answer the pages, the ship turned around between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., according to the Daily Mail.
A shipwide search was launched at about 3:30 p.m.
“Carnival staff began scanning security camera footage and then confirmed the worst – Gigler had jumped overboard and was lost at sea off the coast of Baja California,” the Daily Mail reported. The report did not say what time that footage was taken.
The ship then continued its trip from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to Long Beach, California, with the search left in the hands of local authorities, according to the newspaper. The body was not found.
Gigler, a computer programmer, worked for the software company Esri for 24 years.
The couple would have celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary on Wednesday.
Although a passenger the Daily Mail did not name said Gigler indicated to a person at a bar on the ship the night before his death that he had marital problems, his sister, Wendy Dowden, said that was not so.
Gigler and his wife “were getting along quite well,” she told the newspaper.
“We think something must have happened in his head. He wasn’t in his right mind to have done this,” she said.
Gigler had no history of mental illness, the Daily Mail reported.
Absolutely heartbreaking. 💔
56-year-old California father Thomas Gigler went overboard from the Carnival Panorama while on an anniversary trip with his wife and their three sons.
Carnival says surveillance footage confirmed he went overboard, prompting a search involving the… pic.twitter.com/ksdGtejGZb
— 🎹 Ames™ 🎹 (@AmesStraight) September 22, 2026
“When notified of a missing guest, the ship’s team initiated search and investigation procedures, including reviewing CCTV footage and notifying both the US and Mexico Coast Guards,” Carnival said in a statement
Carnival said Gigler’s family was offered its support.
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