14-Year-Old Missing From Cruise Ship : Search: Suicide note is found from boy who may have jumped after an argument with his parents. Coast Guard scours waters off Florida coast.

The Coast Guard searched Saturday off the coast of Florida for a 14-year-old Canadian boy believed to have jumped from a cruise ship after an argument with his parents.

The boy, Grant Medeiros, disappeared Friday night, leaving only his tennis shoes on deck, Coast Guard Petty Officer Steve Aitkins said.

The boy had previously threatened to jump and his family, after searching the ship, found a suicide note, Aitkins said.

“Nobody saw him jump overboard, nobody saw him in the water. We are going on a report that he is missing from the boat and he had threatened to jump overboard,” Aitkins said.

The parents did not say what the argument was about.

The cruise ship Regal Princess was returning from a weeklong Caribbean cruise. It arrived in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., early Saturday after a three-hour delay as the Coast Guard searched in dark waters.

The ship, owned by Princess Cruises, was about 10 miles southeast of Miami at the time the boy is believed to have jumped off the ship, Aitkins said.

Aitkins said the parents were also traveling with another son and a daughter. The parents, from Saanich, British Columbia, said they last saw the boy at 10 p.m. Friday.

Two thorough searches were conducted on the ship, which holds 1,590 passengers and 800 crew members, Aitkins said. Princess Cruise spokesman Rick James said the boy was not on the boat “to the best of our knowledge.”

A Coast Guard helicopter searched a 170-square-mile area until 2:45 a.m. Saturday. A Coast Guard plane, a 110-foot cutter and another helicopter searched for several hours Saturday.

Aitkins said a life ring, apparently from the Regal Princess, was found in Boca Raton, north of Miami.

“This is extremely rare to happen on a cruise ship,” James said from cruise line headquarters in Los Angeles. “People are out vacationing. It’s not the kind of environment where you would normally get this.”

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Coast Guard officials said they had not yet decided whether to resume their search today.

“There’s very little hope that the boy would have survived through the night, even if he had that life ring that we found near Boca Raton,” Aitkins said. “For one thing, if he jumped off near the ship’s stern, as we believe he did, he would have been immediately sucked underneath the water by the power of the ship’s huge propellers.”