Girl: I heard Ritcheson talking about jumping

Looks like no one really expected David Ritcheson to jump from a cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend: The Chronicle is reporting that Ritcheson told a couple of friends he was thinking of jumping the night before he did so.

"I'm going to jump first thing in the morning before anyone is awake," Ritcheson told two friends, according to a 10-year-old North Texas girl who overheard the exchange.

The child, Landee Adams of Van Alstyne, was so troubled by what she heard that she recounted the conversation to her mother, a paramedic, who dismissed it as idle teen talk.

But the following morning, after scaling a 60-foot tower near the Ecstasy's bow and ignoring security workers' efforts to talk him down, Ritcheson plunged 200 feet into the ocean about 7:30 a.m. Sunday.

Adams said she was at the ship's swimming pool Saturday evening when Ritcheson and two other boys walked past her eating ice cream. When Ritcheson said he was thinking of jumping, Adams said his friends tried to discourage him. "It was scary, but I thought probably he wouldn't so it," she said. On Sunday morning, when the ship's captain announced that a man had gone overboard, Ritcheson was the first thing Adams thought of: "Mom, that's probably that boy!" she told her mother, Misty Adams.

Carlos Leon, the attorney for Ritcheson's family, said he wasn't aware of Ritcheson leaving a suicide note and said he didn't know how Ritcheson spent the night before his suicide — though we know from Adams' statements that he was with the two friends at least part of the time, and another passenger said she saw him dancing with friends at a club on board the ship Saturday night.

The ship, Carnival's Ecstasy, is on its way back to Galveston, and the FBI will take over the investigation into Ritcheson's death when it arrives. For now, security officers are standing guard around the clock outside the cabin where Ritcheson had been staying. We may never know exactly what went though Ritcheon's mind before he jumped, but Leon said he's pretty sure it wasn't an accident. "I don't think so," he told the Chronicle. "I think he was too bright a kid."