DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (WSVN) – New details have emerged in the case of a South Florida woman who vanished at sea on a boating trip with her husband.
Isabella Hellman, from Delray Beach, took a two-week trip with her husband, Lewis Bennett, to help him bring back a boat from St. Maarten.
They were supposed to be back by May 12, but on May 14, Bennett said the catamaran hit something, his wife went overboard, and the boat started sinking 30 miles off the Bahamas.
Hellman hasn’t been seen since.
Her sister, Dayana, recalled their last conversation. “She called me and said, ‘Oh, hi, we just connected the phone. It’s been really hard for us to connect it because his friend told me it’s hard.’ Then she said, ‘I’m in the middle of the ocean right now. We left Cuba.’ She didn’t tell me what time but she said ‘We left Cuba,’ and that’s it. And she said, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.'”
Dayana continued to say that her sister took the trip with her husband of three months but did not want to leave her 9-month-old, Amelia. “The trip was not about the honeymoon that everybody is saying,” Dayana said.
Hellman promised her sister that she would not miss her graduation and called her sister just hours before she disappeared on May 14.
“They were supposed to go from St. Maarten to Puerto Rico, from Puerto Rico to Cuba, and from Cuba to Key West,” Dayana said. “She was supposed to be here for my graduation. She said, ‘I’m not going to miss your graduation.'”
Bennett said he was asleep and Hellman was keeping watch at the time of the incident. He said when he went to look for Hellman, she was gone.
Bennett was found by the Coast Guard in a life boat, Monday morning.
The FBI is now involved in the investigation.
Hellman’s sister said Bennett has left the country with their baby.
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