{"id":24906,"date":"2026-05-17T11:03:31","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T11:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grow24.us\/?p=24906"},"modified":"2026-05-17T11:03:31","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T11:03:31","slug":"save-my-wife-and-child-monica-would-never-put-her-daughter-in-danger-that-wasnt-an-excuse-it-was-the-agonizing-cry-of-a-husband-who-had-lost-everything-in-a-single-fateful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grow24.us\/?p=24906","title":{"rendered":"SAVE MY WIFE AND CHILD\u2026 MONICA WOULD NEVER PUT HER DAUGHTER IN DANGER.\u201d That wasn\u2019t an excuse. It was the agonizing cry of a husband who had lost everything in a single fateful dive in the Maldives. He lost his wife. He lost his 20-year-old daughter. And what remained wasn\u2019t just grief\u2026 but a terrifying premonition: \u201cSomething happened down there.\u201d A seasoned marine biologist. A mother who would protect her daughter at all costs. A trip that began out of love for the ocean\u2026 Then 160 feet swallowed them. Perhaps the most haunting thing wasn\u2019t the death. It was the last message he sent his wife before the tragedy. No one knows exactly what happened at the bottom of the sea that day."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Husband who lost wife, daughter in Maldives diving tragedy insists \u2018something happened down there\u2019 as he searches for answers<\/h1>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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Oxygen toxicity, panic may have killed 5 tourists on Maldives scuba dive: experts<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A grieving Italian scientist who lost both his wife and a daughter in the\u00a0Maldives diving tragedy\u00a0insisted Friday that something wildly unexpected must have happened because his wife was too experienced a diver to have taken risks.<\/p>\n

Carlo Sommacal raised his concerns after his wife, Monica Montefalcone, 52, and their 20-year-old daughter, Giorgia Sommacal, were among the five who failed to resurface during the\u00a0scuba diving trip\u00a0in a cave on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe only certainty I have is that my wife is among the best divers on the face of the earth. And that she\u2019s always been conscientious. Never would she have endangered the life of our daughter\u201d or the others with them, Sommacal\u00a0told La Repubblica\u00a0on Friday.<\/p>\n

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\"Giorgia<\/div>
The father of Maldives diving victim Giorgia Sommacal, 20, has broken his silence.Giorgia Sommacal \/ Instagram<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cSomething must have happened down there,\u201d the retired scientist stated firmly.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe one went into trouble, maybe the oxygen cylinders, I have no idea. But I\u2019m ready to swear anything about Monica\u2019s behavior,\u201d insisted the new widower<\/p>\n

Monica and Giorgia were in the Maldives on an expedition with a group from the University of Genoa, where the mom was an associate professor of ecology, and her daughter a student. Two of the other three who died were part of the same uni group.<\/p>\n

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\"Monica<\/div>
Giorgia\u2019s mother, Monica Montefalcone, 52, also died in the tragedy.ZUMAPRESS.com<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The grieving widower never suspected anything could happen, and his last message to his wife was a WhatsApp \u201cto tell her that the cats were fine,\u201d he told the Italian paper.<\/p>\n

Now, he anxiously awaits news of the recovery mission, which had to be\u00a0called off Friday due to \u201cvery bad\u201d weather\u00a0in the area. Officials say only the body of one diver \u2014 Gianluca Benedetti \u2014 has been found, correcting earlier reports it was Sommacal\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n

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\"Carlo<\/div>
Carlo Sommacal said his wife was a highly experienced diver.Network4<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cYesterday they said they had found the bodies, but it is not true,\u201d Sommacal said. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t know what to think, because I would at least have them back here for the last goodbye, but I don\u2019t know if I could bear it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He unexpectedly has to \u201cbe strong\u201d for his son, Matthew, who is still in high school.<\/p>\n

Sommacal said he met his wife, a renowned marine biologist, in Milan, and they only moved to Genoa because Monica told him, \u201cI love the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around 20 people, all Italians, were on board the \u201cDuke of York,\u201d the ship involved in the deadly dive, at the time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Husband who lost wife, daughter in Maldives diving tragedy insists \u2018something happened down there\u2019 as he searches for answers Oxygen toxicity, panic may have killed 5 tourists… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24907,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow24.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow24.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow24.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow24.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow24.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grow24.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24908,"href":"https:\/\/grow24.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24906\/revisions\/24908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow24.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow24.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow24.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow24.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}