TERMINI IMERESE: Sicilian prosecutors said on Saturday they were investigating possible manslaughter after a superyacht sank killing seven people, as it emerged that trapped passengers scrabbled for air pockets after it went down.

UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, four friends and the yacht’s cook died when the British-flagged Bayesian sank in a storm before dawn on Monday.

“The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Termini Imerese has registered a file with the state against unknown persons, hypothesising the crimes of negligent shipwreck and multiple negligent manslaughter,” state prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio told reporters on the Italian island.

But he said he was only announcing the probe due to the huge international interest in the case, stressing: “We are only in the initial phase of the investigations.

“At this stage, precisely because the investigation could develop in any way, we are absolutely not ruling anything out.” Lynch, 59, had invited friends and family onto the boat to celebrate his recent acquittal in a massive US fraud case. But the 56-metre (185-foot) yacht was struck by something akin to a mini-tornado before dawn on Monday as it was anchored off Porticello, near Palermo. Fifteen people were rescued and the body of the yacht’s chef was found shortly afterwards. Six passengers were reported missing. A major search operation including specialist divers subsequently identified the bodies of four of Lynch’s friends on Wednesday.

Lynch’s body was found on Thursday and that of his daughter, who had been preparing to go to Oxford University, on Friday.

Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2024