Yacht crews and friends - including Below Deck reality show star - pay touching tribute to 'murdered' superyacht 'golden girl' Paige Bell on her birthday and reveal how she'd planned to celebrate turning 21
The South African crew member was found dead in the engine room of Far From It, the luxury motor boat she worked on in the Bahamas, on July 3.
Police arrested a 39-year-old Mexican engineer who worked with Paige after discovering him near her body, and he was later charged with her murder.
Paige's distraught parents Michelle and John Bell flew out to the Bahamas last week, 'seeking justice for the monster that took her life' and 'to begin the painful process of bringing their baby girl home.'
Tragically, Paige had been just days away from travelling home to Durban to attend a big celebration with loved ones for her birthday on July 14.
As they prepared to mark the milestone without their beloved daughter, a statement written on GoFundMe on behalf of Paige's family asked that people 'come together' to commemorate her life.
'In honor of Paige, her mother has asked that we all eat red velvet cake (her favorite) on that day and share a photo in remembrance of the beautiful soul she was,' it read.
Yacht workers, friends and well-wishers around the world responded by sharing their support for the family, with dozens posting pictures of their red velvet cakes.
Crews on boats from the Bahamas to Europe and Paige's native South Africa also blared their horns in a worldwide tribute to honour the life of one of their own.
When a seafarer dies, it is a maritime tradition to sound eight bells to honour them - a signal that a sailor's 'watch' is over.
Yacht captain and Below Deck star Hugo Ortega shared a picture of Paige and footage of a harbour full of yachts sounding their horns on her birthday.
In a tribute on social media, he wrote: 'To Paige's family, boyfriend, crew & friends, I'm so incredibly sorry.
'I think I can speak for the entire yachting community when I say my heart is broken for you... for women in the industry, for women everywhere,' he added.
One of Paige's crewmates and close friends shared a touching tribute to the youngster, who she called 'my darling angel.'
'Happy birthday to the girl with the loudest cackle. Thank you for being an absolute ray of sunshine in my life, you will be deeply missed.
'I will miss being woken up by your contagious laugh on our off duty days,' she said, adding: 'Love you lots, more than you like pepperoni [pizza].'
Pictures in her post showed Paige smiling with her team and a bottle of prosecco emblazoned with her nickname 'Paigey' and 21.
Countless videos from around the world showed yacht crews blaring their horns, both at sea and in harbour, highlighting how hard the tragic news of Paige's death has hit the tight-knit yachting community.
Sharing footage of him and his crew eating red velvet cake as he switches their boat's horn on, crew member Andre West wrote: 'As a South African crew in Greece, we are sending every ounce of love and all the comfort in the world to the friends and family of Paige Bell. Our hearts break with you all. Fly high.'
Another clip showed a crew falling silent in prayer as they paused work to remember the young woman's life.
Industry broadcaster Yachting International Radio shared a moving tribute online, reiterating the request of Paige's family that people mark her birthday with cake.
'We didn't know Paige. But we know grief. We know the ache of a life interrupted. And we know this industry has too often turned away instead of toward,' the poignant statement read.
'So today, we pause. Not to perform. But to remember. Because some absences should never feel quiet.
The broadcaster, which works to highlight issues faced by the yachting industry, added poignantly: 'The fight for justice and change can resume tomorrow.
'Today, we say her name. Not in anger. Not in noise. But in stillness, so the world cannot forget. Paige.'
The young stewardess was remembered by those who knew her as a hard-working 'golden girl' with a 'radiant spirit' and 'infectious laughter'.
Stephanus Coetzer former crewmate of Paige on board motor yacht Sweet Emocean, said she had told him of her dream of becoming a Chief Stew.
'I truly believe that if she was with us still she would have accomplished all of her dreams, without a doubt,' he said in a tribute post. 'I believe she would have tried to "be the change" that she believed made crew members good.'
Just after 1pm on July 3, police were alerted to an incident at the marina on Harbour Island, an exclusive resort 60 miles east of the capital Nassau.
Cops boarded the 43-metre yacht Far From It, where they were told that Paige had not been seen for a short period of time.
They found her unresponsive in the yacht's engine room with visible injuries, before a doctor attended the scene and confirmed she had died.
She was found near the engineer who had severe injuries to his arm in what police described as a suspected suicide attempt.
He was apprehended, cautioned and taken to a nearby clinic for treatment, police said in a statement, before he was later charged with murder.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Brynmill murder charge as man dies in Swansea
A man has been charged with murder following the death of a 65-year-old man in Swansea. Police were called to an alleged assault and an unconscious man outside The Mill pub on Brynymor Road, Brynmill in Swansea at around 20.15 BST on 65-year-old man was taken to Morriston Hospital where he died on Sunday. His next of kin has been informed and are being supported, South Wales Police Vonks, 50, from Swansea, has been charged with murder and is due to appear at Swansea Magistrates' Court on Monday.
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘I shouldn't have to fight for answers': David Amess's daughter on the MP's murder and her fury at his friends and colleagues
The last time Katie Amess saw her dad, the Conservative MP Sir David Amess, he was dropping her at Heathrow for her flight home to Los Angeles. Usually, she would cry when they said goodbye, but this time neither were sad – they were both excited. In six weeks, Katie would be back for her wedding. 'It was going to be in the House of Commons and my dad could not wait to walk me down the aisle,' she says. 'He'd been practising, taking my arm, walking me around. We joked about it – we were calling it the 'royal wedding'. At the airport, we hugged goodbye and he kissed me on both cheeks. I skipped off thinking the next time I saw him would be the best day of my life.' Instead, just four weeks later, her father was murdered at his surgery, stabbed 21 times by an Islamic State sympathiser. He was buried in the suit he was going to wear to the wedding. The music planned for walking Katie down the aisle – Pachelbel's Canon – was instead played as his coffin was carried into the church. The murder of David Amess in October 2021, while serving his constituency in a church hall in Leigh-on-Sea, sent shock waves across the country – and the details that have since emerged should have deepened the outrage and furthered the questions. Amess's killer, Ali Harbi Ali, was a once bright, motivated teenager planning to study medicine who had self-radicalised during Syria's civil war. The teachers at his Croydon school had noticed – one described it as a light going out and that his 'eyes were dead'. Ali's attendance fell, his grades plummeted and attempts to talk to him only raised more concerns, leading the school to contact Prevent, the government-led counter-terrorism strategy designed to identify and deradicalise extremists. One home visit was made, followed by one brief meeting between Ali and an 'intervention provider' in a McDonald's. Conversation was limited to two subjects: whether western music and student loans were unlawful in Islam. Ali was deemed a 'pleasant and informed young man'. (He later said: 'I just knew to nod my head and say yes and they would leave me alone afterwards and they did.') There was no follow-up, no further consultations or contact with his referring teachers. There was no monitoring. Despite the atrocity Ali went on to commit, Katie believes there has been little scrutiny of any of the above, no accountability or consequences for the anonymous officials involved and no requirement to give a public account of their actions and lessons learned. For almost four years, Katie, on behalf of the Amess family, has pushed for an inquiry. Partly as a result of this pressure, the Home Office commissioned Lord Anderson, the interim Prevent commissioner, to produce a rapid review of the case in order to identify whether questions remain unanswered. It was published last week and concluded: 'Though the information available on [Ali's] case is not complete and likely never will be,' the 'unhappy story' of his engagement with Prevent had been 'squeezed almost dry'. Katie doesn't agree. 'I'm not going to give up,' she says. 'All we want is for someone to say: 'We're sorry. This is what happened, these are the mistakes made and this is what we're doing to make sure it never happens again.' I shouldn't have to fight for answers.' Born in Basildon to an electrician father and a dressmaker mother, David Amess was a working-class, Catholic Conservative and had been an Essex MP for 38 years when he was murdered. He was approaching his 70th birthday – on that last airport trip with Katie, she had broached the subject of retirement. 'He didn't want to retire any time soon,' she says. 'He felt he had so much left to do.' Having an MP father was all Katie had ever known, but Amess was not an absent figure, away at Westminster. He was committed to his constituency with no ambitions for higher office. 'When I was young, I used to ask: 'Do you think you could be prime minister?' He'd say: 'Absolutely not!'' For Katie, the second of five children, all born within seven years, he was present and fun and always loomed large in her life. 'My dad was absolutely hilarious and completely inappropriate,' she says. 'He'd do the craziest things and sometimes they were a bit dangerous.' He would booby trap the house at Halloween. He would take all five children to water parks even though he couldn't swim and would have been unable to rescue any of them. At toll booths, on family road trips, all five children were instructed to blow raspberries while he paid the operator. 'He was obsessed with animals, so we had dogs, cats, chickens, bunny rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, a goat called Tinkerbell,' says Katie. 'He wanted a small pony at one point, but Mum vetoed that. He had fish and birds in his office even though no animals were allowed, but he didn't listen to rules. At Halloween, he'd go to Westminster in full goblin outfit. At Christmas, he'd put a tree on his balcony at Westminster, which was definitely not allowed, and his whole office was lit up with flashing lights.' From the age of four, Katie accompanied him to constituency events. 'My elder brother was out playing football and my mum had my three younger sisters to look after, so I was all dressed up and dragged to garden parties and village fetes.' Later, when she moved to London for drama school – she is now an actor – she stayed in her dad's London flat. 'I'm so glad I spent all that time with him so I could just be around him and soak up what he was about,' she says. 'I never knew I wouldn't be with him for another 30 years.' Amess was very well known in his Southend West and Leigh constituency. 'He spent so much time there,' says Katie. 'Everybody knew his name and face. I've received so many messages since he died saying: 'We didn't agree with him politically, but he helped my elderly parents'; 'He got support for my disabled child'; 'He visited my sick grandma in hospital.'' In some ways, his profile and accessibility made him vulnerable. He was the face of government and easy to locate. In fact, it later emerged that Ali had worked through a list of possible victims, including Michael Gove and Keir Starmer, both of who were deemed too complicated to find. Amess – targeted because he had voted in favour of airstrikes against Islamic State – was holding a surgery. (The pinned tweet on Amess's account gave the date, place and details of how to book.) 'I always worried about Dad's safety, but I thought if anything was going to happen, it would be a punch-up from a local yob,' says Katie. 'Never in your wildest dreams would you imagine that a terrorist would go through a list and then come and murder your dad. It's just so shocking. It's still unbelievable.' In the immediate aftermath, the family were too stunned to think about inquiries or even formulate questions. Katie remembers flying straight back to the UK, walking into the family home and seeing the runner beans Amess had picked from the garden before going to surgery. 'I washed up his breakfast plates – tea and toast – from the morning it happened as well as his dinner plates from the night before and could not believe it was the last time I'd ever be doing this,' she says. 'All those times I was annoyed that he'd left his plates for me to clean when I was in his London flat for drama school. Now, I just wanted to be able to clean them one more time.' When details about Ali's history with Prevent began surfacing, the family assumed an inquiry would be announced after his trial. (In April 2022, Ali was given a whole-life sentence.) Two home secretaries – Priti Patel and Suella Braverman – assured the family that they were working on it, but their successor James Cleverly refused to meet them. Instead, there has been only a Prevent learning review, completed in February 2022. This gives a glimpse of Prevent's failures in the case – the strange decision‑making (why focus on student loans and western music only?), the lack of record-keeping, the absence of communication, returned emails or follow-up. 'I was absolutely gobsmacked when I read it,' says Katie. 'I could run Prevent better with my friends. If these are the people entrusted to save us from terrorism, we've got a huge problem.' Equally striking is the sparsity of the review. No one involved is identified or even interviewed. It's a review of secondhand accounts and the records kept (and not kept). 'The main conclusion it seems to draw is that so much has changed with Prevent, it's all been fixed, so we don't need to look any harder,' says Katie. 'If that was true, why were three little girls murdered in Southport last year?' Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, was referred to and rejected by Prevent three times. One of the questions to be asked in the Southport inquiry is whether Prevent needs a complete overhaul. 'They could have asked that question years earlier after my dad was killed and perhaps Southport wouldn't have happened,' says Katie. Campaigning hasn't been easy. Katie is based in the US and her mother, Julia, is not well – she had a stroke shortly after Ali's trial, which the family attributes to trauma and grief. The change of government briefly gave them hope. Katie and Julia had a video meeting with Yvette Cooper, the new home secretary, who told them that Amess was a great friend, their Westminster offices were next door and they used to walk to the Commons chamber together. 'We thought: 'Perfect. Now we're getting somewhere,'' says Katie. Instead, months passed. Finally, in March, in another video call, Cooper admitted there wouldn't be an inquiry. 'My mum said: 'Look me in the eyes and tell me as his friend that you think you're doing the right thing.' Yvette Cooper could not answer.' In a formal letter, Cooper explained that it was 'hard to see' how an inquiry could go beyond what had already been established in the trial, the Prevent learning review and the coroner's report, as well as the forthcoming rapid review by Lord Anderson. 'When an elected official is killed in a church hall in broad daylight by somebody the government is monitoring, there should be an inquiry – it shouldn't even be a question,' says Amess. 'This isn't a witch-hunt, but there should be some accountability. The mistakes made cost me my father, my mother's husband, a grandfather, a brother, a son. 'I don't think we'll ever recover,' she continues. 'It's my 40th birthday this month and I know I'd have flown back to England like I did every summer and my dad would have thrown me a huge party. There'd have been 40 balloons and he'd have made my friends give me 40 bumps! I want to have children, but I think: 'What sort of mother would I be now when I'm in so much trauma and heartache?' I used to think he'd be such a funny grandpa. All that has been robbed from me.' For Katie, the lack of support from Westminster after her father's decades of service is deeply painful and nonsensical, too. 'I just cannot believe the way we've been treated by his friends and colleagues,' she says. 'It's in all their interests. They are meeting the public day in, day out, so why don't they want to investigate properly and establish what would make them safer? Dad's legacy needs to be that through what happened to him, he saves other people. Please, just show some human decency. Do the right thing.' Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Sky News
4 hours ago
- Sky News
Suspected robber's arrest leads police to find woman's body in house - and officers fear two others 'may have come to harm'
A murder investigation has been launched after the arrest of a suspected armed robber led officers to find the body of a young woman inside a house. Officers are also trying to trace a man and woman they believe "may have come to harm" in relation to the case, West Yorkshire Police said. The force had arrested the 37-year-old suspect after they received reports of an armed robbery at an Asda in Dewsbury, at 9.21pm on Saturday. Officers attended, arrested the man and seized a knife, the force said. Following the arrest, the armed robbery suspect told officers about a woman who he believed to be dead inside a property on Norfolk Street in Batley. Officers attended the address and found the body of a woman in her 20s. A spokesperson for the force said formal identification is yet to take place. The armed robbery suspect was subsequently arrested on suspicion of murder. Officers are searching the Dewsbury area for the two other people they believe may have come to harm, with police present in the town centre, near to the River Calder and in Westtown. The force is appealing to anyone with CCTV, doorbell or dashcam footage to come forward. Detective Chief Inspector Dan Bates, of the homicide and major enquiry team, said: "This is clearly a very serious incident, where a young woman has lost her life. "There is a heightened police presence in Dewsbury today as we work to establish the full circumstances surrounding this incident. "Our immediate priority is to identify and locate the two people and establish whether or not they have come to any harm. "A murder investigation is also under way and we do not believe there is any wider risk to the public at this time. "We recognise this inquiry will cause concern in the community; we are working closely with our colleagues in the local neighbourhood policing team, who have stepped up patrols in the town centre."
