Potential manslaughter being investigated in superyacht sinking, Italian prosecutor says
Investigators are considering potential manslaughter as they try to find out what caused the Bayesian superyacht to sink, killing seven people, an Italian prosecutor has said.
Prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio said "behaviours that were not perfectly in order" may have been behind the number of deaths off the coast of Sicily at a news conference on Saturday.
Investigators will focus on "the extent all the people [on board] were warned" of safety procedures, he said.
Responsibility could lie with "all members of the crew... the manufacturers... [or those who were] not surveying or supervising the ship".
But all lines of inquiry are being considered, including the role of the extreme weather that struck the area, he added.
Bodies found inside two cabins
Firefighter Bentivoglio Fiandra revealed that when the emergency call came in at 4.38am on 19 August, the yacht had already sunk and was on its right-hand side around 50m underwater.
As a result those who died "were trying to hide in the cabins on the left-hand side" of the vessel, he said. Alternatively, they could have been asleep, so failed to escape.
Tributes pour in for youngest victim; superyacht latest
Divers found the body of the on-board chef near the vessel first, he added.
Then, a rotating team of rescuers discovered five others inside the yacht - in the first cabin on the left-hand side - and the final one in the third on that side.
Investigators plan to retrieve the shipwreck from the seabed to be able to establish the circumstances in which the yacht capsized, the prosecutor said on Saturday, with the owners taking responsibility for the cost.
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What we know about disaster
So far there is no indication it was anchored in a bad position, he added.
Water samples have been taken from near the wreckage and so far there is no evidence of dangerous hydrocarbons coming from the yacht, the news conference was told.
Autopsies not carried out yet
Autopsies have not yet been carried out on the victims, who were retrieved from the wreckage between Monday and Friday.
British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, 59, was among the seven who died after the yacht got into difficulty and sank as little as 60 seconds in the early hours.
The others included Morgan Stanley chairman Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy, American lawyer Chris Morvillo, his wife Neda, and the yacht's on-board chef Reclado Thomas.
Mr Lynch's 18-year-old daughter Hannah was the final body divers recovered on Friday. Her mother and his wife Angela Bacares survived the disaster. Their other daughter Esme was not on board and paid tribute to her sister in a family-released statement.
The family is believed to have organised the trip to celebrate the end of Mr Lynch's legal troubles.
In July he was cleared of 15 US fraud charges in a case that lasted 12 years and focused on the sale of his company Autonomy to US firm Hewlett Packard in 2011.
Prosecutors claimed he deliberately overstated the value of the firm he founded in 1996. Mr Lynch always denied wrongdoing.
