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Toddler drowns after falling from family’s boat while watching film as parents cooked

Māhina Toki, from New Zealand’s Great Barrier Island, was on holiday on her family’s yacht which was docked at Fiji’s Musket Cove when she wriggled free of her harness and fell in the water

A “beautiful and smiling” 13-month-old tot has died after drowning when she wriggled free of the harness attaching her to her family’s boat and jumping in the sea off Fiji.

Māhina Toki was a little over a year old when she fell from the family’s yacht, which was docked in Musket Cove on Fiji’s western coast on Friday. Her parents Mark and Kiri believed Māhina was strapped into a harness while she was watching a movie. The couple, who were cooking dinner in the galley, then returned but couldn’t see their child anywhere.

After scrambling to try find her, they saw their toddler’s dead body floating in the sea. Though they tried to revive her, their efforts were unsuccessful. The New Zealand family had arrived at Musket Cove in a 32ft catamaran after setting sail from their home on Great Barrier Island. A fundraising page set up for repatriation flights and funeral costs, which has already raised $17000 NZD (£8,157), said that the little one “worked free of her tether” and that “by the time we [her parents] could find her, it was too late”, a family friend wrote.

Due to being docked, there were a large number of people around at the time of the tragedy, including doctors and other medics. They all rushed to the boat in a desperate attempt to assist the family.

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