🔥 15-year-old girl’s final words before she was killed by a boat propeller on a school trip in the Maldives. Her parents say it should never have happened 😱
The Final Words of a 15-Year-Old Girl Killed by a Boat Propeller on a School Trip Her Parents Say Should Never Have Happened
The last words Jenna Chan ever spoke still haunt her parents. They appear in the lawsuit filed this week in Singapore’s High Court, a raw fragment of a life cut short on what was supposed to be an educational adventure in paradise. On November 8, 2024, the 15-year-old British-Singaporean student from St Joseph’s Institution International was snorkelling near Dhigurah island in the Maldives when a reversing boat’s propeller struck her. She never came home. Twenty months later, her mother Jennifer Liauw and father Alan Chan have taken the extraordinary step of suing the school for negligence, declaring that every other path to accountability had failed.
Jenna was a Grade 9 student participating in a compulsory National Youth Achievement Award overseas expedition. The trip formed part of the school’s outdoor education programme — a requirement for promotion to the next academic year. Parents had been given safety assurances. Students had been told they would be well supervised. Yet when Jenna entered the water for a whale shark excursion organised by an external vendor, the Maldives Whale Shark Research Programme, those assurances shattered in the most brutal way imaginable.
According to the statement of claim, the school owed Jenna a non-delegable duty of care precisely because she was a child placed in its custody on a mandatory trip. That duty, the parents argue, could not be outsourced to a third-party operator. They contend SJII failed to properly vet the vendor, failed to assess the real risks of snorkelling near boats in open water, and failed to ensure adequate supervision at the critical moment. The result, they say, was a preventable tragedy that no family should ever have to endure.
The lawsuit lands after more than a year and a half of private anguish and unanswered questions. Jenna’s parents describe litigation as “a last resort after every other avenue for accountability failed.” Their goal is not simply financial compensation. In a separate statement they made clear their primary hope: “the comfort and certainty that no other family will have to go through the experience which we have gone through.” They want Jenna remembered for the vibrant young person she was, not only for the horrific manner of her death. “If her story helps make things safer for other children, then some good will have come from an unimaginable loss.”
The details of the incident remain searing. Jenna was in the waters of the Alifu Dhaalu Atoll when she was struck by the propeller of a boat that was reversing. Propeller injuries are among the most catastrophic in marine accidents — sudden, violent, and often unsurvivable. For a 15-year-old on a school-sanctioned activity, the horror is compounded by the knowledge that she was there because the school required it. The trip was not optional. It was part of the curriculum. That fact sits at the heart of the legal claim.
School trips to exotic destinations have become status symbols for elite international schools. They promise character-building, global awareness, and unforgettable experiences. Brochures show turquoise water, smiling teenagers, and glowing testimonials. What they rarely show is the fine print of risk: boats with spinning propellers, strong currents, variable supervision standards, and the reality that even well-intentioned operators can make fatal mistakes. Jenna’s death forces an uncomfortable question into the open: when a school sends children thousands of miles from home for a compulsory activity, how thoroughly does it own the consequences?
The family’s lawyers — Jennifer Lim of Duxton Hill Chambers, Jonathan Muk of Nusa Chambers, and Providence Law Asia — have framed the case around that ownership. Because the expedition was mandatory, they argue, the school could not simply hand responsibility to an external provider and walk away. The duty of care remained with SJII. If the school failed to investigate the vendor’s safety record, failed to demand specific protocols around boat movements during snorkelling, or failed to place enough trained staff in the water, then it breached that duty. Those are the allegations now before the High Court.
For Jennifer Liauw and Alan Chan, the past twenty months have been a second ordeal layered on top of grief. They have sought answers from the school, from Maldivian authorities, and from the research programme involved. They describe a process marked by silence, deflection, and a lack of basic transparency. Filing a lawsuit in the High Court — where claims typically exceed $250,000 — represents the point at which private diplomacy collapsed. They are suing both as co-administrators of Jenna’s estate and as her dependants, ensuring the case can address both the loss of her life and the devastating impact on those left behind.
The broader context makes the tragedy even harder to accept. Jenna was not a reckless teenager sneaking off on an unsanctioned adventure. She was a student fulfilling a school requirement. She was participating in a whale shark research activity framed as educational and purposeful. She was under the care of adults who had been entrusted with her safety. That those adults — whether school staff or external operators — failed to keep a spinning propeller away from a snorkelling child is the core of the parents’ fury and sorrow.
Marine safety experts have long warned about the lethal combination of swimmers and boats. Propeller guards, kill switches, designated snorkelling zones, and strict “engines off” protocols exist precisely because the consequences of contact are catastrophic. Whether those safeguards were in place, properly enforced, or even considered during Jenna’s excursion will form a central part of the legal battle ahead. The family’s claim suggests they were not.
Meanwhile, life at SJII has continued. The school has resumed overseas trips even as the investigation into Jenna’s death remains unresolved. That decision has itself drawn scrutiny. For Jenna’s parents, every new group of students boarding a plane for an exotic expedition must feel like a fresh wound. They are left wondering how many other families are signing permission slips without understanding the real risks, and how many schools are treating external vendors as a shield rather than a partner in safety.
The lawsuit will now move through the Singapore courts. Evidence will be examined. Witnesses will be called. Safety protocols will be dissected in painful detail. Through it all, two parents will keep returning to the same unbearable truth: their daughter left home for a school trip and never returned. Her final words, preserved in the court papers, stand as both memorial and indictment — a teenager’s last expression of life just before a boat propeller ended it.
No court judgment can restore Jenna Chan to her family. No amount of damages can fill the silence in their home. What the lawsuit can do, her parents hope, is force a reckoning. It can compel schools to treat compulsory overseas trips with the gravity they deserve. It can demand that vendors be rigorously vetted and continuously supervised. It can ensure that the next time a child enters the water on a school activity, the adults responsible have done everything possible to keep spinning blades far away.
Jenna Chan was fifteen years old. She was a student, a daughter, a sister, a young person full of promise. She died in turquoise water under a tropical sky while doing exactly what her school had asked her to do. Her parents are now asking the courts — and the public — to make certain that no other child pays the same price. The propeller that killed her cannot be undone. The systems that allowed it to happen still can.
