A childhood friend has publicly mourned Keith Caruana, the 48-year-old father who died after a boat carrying three people ran aground on Sikka s-Safra off Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq, in an account first reported by Lovin Malta.
In a Facebook post, Tania Agius wrote that she had known Caruana since childhood, recalling years of friendship, laughter and boat trips. “Keith, you were taken far too soon, and you’ll be sadly missed by so many,” she wrote.
Her tribute also turned to Caruana’s 14-year-old son, Ben Caruana Rizzo, who was seriously injured in the same accident. Agius said he was stable in the Intensive Therapy Unit but still facing a difficult recovery, and appealed for prayers for him. Lovin Malta also reported that a 44-year-old man was seriously injured.
The tribute does not answer the harder question of how the boat came to run aground with such consequences. It does something narrower and, in its own way, more exact. It names the damage beyond the official outline: one man dead, a boy in intensive care, another adult badly hurt, and the old local map of friendship suddenly rearranged.
Agius’s details are small and recognisable: Wardija, childhood, shared boat adventures, memories that become sharper after death than they ever felt during life. On an island, grief is often recorded that way first, through the places and years people shared before any formal account has finished explaining what happened.
For now, the public record says this much: the boat struck Sikka s-Safra on Sunday evening, Caruana died, and his son remains in hospital recovering from the same trip.
Sophia Borg 
Isla Camilleri 
Alex de Valletta 
Elena Vella