Italian prosecutors are investigating the captain of a luxury yacht that sank at almost lightning speed off the coast of Sicily “for manslaughter and shipwreck,” according to local reports confirmed by Reuters.
Autopsies are due to be soon carried out on the bodies of those who died in the disaster, including billionaire U.K. tech magnate Mike Lynch, who was only weeks earlier acquitted of fraud by a U.S. court over the $12 billion sale of his company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. Among the other victims were his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, as well as Lynch’s lawyer and one of his team’s key witnesses during those proceedings.
A New Zealand national, 51-year-old James Cutfield had served as captain of the 184-foot superyacht Bayesian, which sank within just 60 seconds on Aug. 19 after being hit by a “tornadic waterspout” during a storm while moored about half a mile from the port of Palermo.
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Under maritime law, Cutfield holds final responsibility for the well-being of all passengers and crew aboard the vessel. He has already been interrogated twice by police, and authorities have not yet indicated whether they plan to place any of the other eight surviving members of Cutfield’s crew under investigation.
Though it was ultimately a sudden turn in the weather that saw the Bayesian swallowed by the waves, Ambrogio Cartosio, head of the local public prosecutor’s office, recently said it was “plausible” human error had also played a role in the boat’s sinking.
Local press has further quoted nautical architect Franco Romani, a member of the team who designed the yacht, saying there was a possibility the vessel took on water at great speed due to a side hatch having been left open.
Fifteen of a total of 22 people aboard the boat survived its sinking, including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, and another woman, named as Charlotte Golunski, who saved her 1-year-old daughter’s life by holding the baby over her head above the waves.
In a bizarre twist to already tragic events, Lynch’s co-defendant during his recent trial, Stephen Chamberlain, also died in a U.K. hospital within just hours of the boat’s sinking, succumbing to injuries sustained in a car collision two days earlier.
