Italian prosecutors said on Saturday they had opened an investigation into negligent vessel disruption and multiple homicide after a superyacht capsized during a storm off the coast of Sicily, killing seven people on board, including British technology magnate Mike Lynch and his daughter.
Termini Imerese prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio confirmed the launch of the investigation but said no suspect had been identified at this time.
“We are only in the early stages of the investigation. We cannot rule out any developments at this time,” he told reporters at a press conference.
Cartosio said his team will carefully examine all possible elements of responsibility, including those of the ship’s captain, crew, those in charge of supervision, the ship’s builder and others.
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“It seems likely to me that criminal offenses have been committed, that this could be a case of manslaughter, but we can only determine that if you give us time to investigate,” he said.
The main question investigators are focusing on is how a sailing ship that was classified as “unsinkable” by its manufacturer, the Italian shipyard Perini Navi, could sink while a nearby sailboat remained largely unscathed.
Prosecutors said the event happened “extremely quickly” and the information they received indicated a “downburst,” a localized, strong wind that originates from a thunderstorm and spreads rapidly after hitting the ground.
Civil defense officials initially assumed that the yacht, which had a distinctive 75-meter-high aluminum mast, had been hit by a tornado over the water, a so-called waterspout.
Investigators also raised questions about why almost the entire crew except the cook was rescued while six passengers remained trapped in the hull.
Local officials confirmed that most of the recovered bodies were found in the same part of the ship, near the exit, suggesting that passengers had attempted to disembark.
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Deputy prosecutor Raffaele Cammarano said it was likely the passengers were asleep, adding that one of the main focuses of the investigation was to determine whether anyone warned them.
Cammarano confirmed that a person was keeping watch in the cockpit.
Rescue workers on Friday brought to shore the last of seven bodies found when the Bayesian, a 184-foot British-flagged luxury yacht, sank in a storm near the Mediterranean island in southern Italy early Monday morning. The sailboat was carrying a crew of 10 and 12 passengers.
The seventh victim was Hannah Lynch, 18, the daughter of Mike Lynch, whose body was recovered on Thursday. He had been celebrating his recent acquittal on fraud charges with his family and defense lawyers in court in the United States. His wife, Angela Bacares, was among the 15 survivors.
Rescue workers struggled for four days to find all the bodies, making slow progress inside the wreck, which lay 50 metres below the surface on the seabed.
The other five victims are Christopher Morvillo, one of Lynch’s U.S. attorneys, and his wife Neda, Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley’s London-based investment banking subsidiary, and his wife Judy, and Recaldo Thomas, the yacht’s chef.
