Scuba diving firm that left weights strapped to drowned woman's body in Florida 'had left TWO OTHERS stranded in water before'



Chinese woman believed to have panicked underwater after leaving group

She didn't speak English and may not have understood safety instructions

The boat operator hit headlines in 2011 after stranding two divers at sea



A Chinese tourist in her 30s mysteriously drowned on Sunday during a group scuba diving trip off the coast of Miami Beach, Florida.

She was found with a weight belt still strapped around her waist, but had no other equipment on her body, leading police to launch an investigation.

The victim had taken part in a scuba dive organised by RJ Diving Ventures of Miami Beach, the same company that reportedly left two divers stranded in open water in October 2011.



Group diving trip: The female Chinese tourist in her 30s was found dead during the group diving trip in Key Biscayne, Miami (diving group pictured alongside police)

Kevin Galloway, an EMT, performed CPR on the woman after she was hauled out of the water

The woman, who has not been named, failed to surface after a group of 40 divers went into the water near Key Biscayne. Although everyone was paired up with a diving buddy, those aboard said the woman must have dived alone and panicked.



One theory is that the woman failed to understand safety procedures and ditched the wrong equipment while panicking under water. CBS 6 reported she appeared nervous before the dive.

'Nobody here did anything wrong, said Ariane Dimitris, a scuba instructor on board, told WSVN .

'She shouldn't have gone alone. If she missed her buddy, she should have stayed on the boat or asked the dive master to go with her or something but nobody knew that she went in by herself.'



Tourist attraction: Divers were taken out on a boat from Key Biscayne (pictured) and were meant to pair up with buddies, but the woman who died did not speak English and left her partner

Investigation: Local Miami Beach Police (pictured) are investigating the mysterious death

She added that scuba divers are taught to jettison the weight belt that keeps them under water.

'I've never heard of anyone taking off even their fins. It's very strange,' Dimitris said.



'And normally if someone panics you're supposed to drop your weights and keep everything else on you because that was her survival.'

Divers believe keeping the weight belt on was the woman's fatal mistake.

They compared it to grabbing onto an anchor in the water, instead of a life preserve.



The woman was declared missing after the group did a roll call and she was not there.



Mysterious death: The woman had been diving off the coast of Key Biscayne, Miami, Florida (pictured)

Divers used a buddy system but the women did not speak English and left her partner, WSVN.com reported.

The US Coast Guard sent a boat to join in the search for the woman who was found after two hours.



'We brought her back up, I did CPR, I'm an EMT,' said diver Kevin Galloway, who was on the boat.



'There were also two student doctors on the boat. We did what we could but she was gone.'

The U.S. Coastguard and Miami-Dade Police are now investigating Sunday's death.

In the 2011 incident, Paul Kline and Fernando Garcia Puerta had to cling to a buoy for two hours after surfacing from their late-afternoon dive in the Atlantic Ocean three miles from Miami and finding no trace of their RJ Diving Ventures boat.



'We were in shock. We could easily have died,' Kline, 44, told the Miami Herald.

VIDEO Chinese woman dies while on scuba trip



