Former Coma Patient’s Statement Prompts Murder Investigation

A woman thought to have leapt from a cruise ship in an attempted suicide denied that she jumped from the vessel on purpose after waking up from a long coma.

Now attention has turned to her partner, who she was staying with on the cruise, the Washington Post reports.

53-year-old Laura Stuardo, who works in Italy, had been arguing with her partner just before she fell off the boat, which was docked in a Norwegian port. She fell 115 feet, injuring her head, lung, stomach and spleen and falling into a deep coma.

The incident had been thought a suicide after the woman’s partner, Giovanni Pia, told police that she attempted to jump to her death. After the woman awoke from her coma and denied that claim, police opened an attempted murder investigation. Pia has not been named as a suspect.

Stuardo told the Italian newspaper La Stampa that Pia had abused her, previously calling her and her daughter “tramps” and grabbing her by the hair to drag her out of his house.

[Washington Post]