Superyacht sinking: Manslaughter charges considered as last body found
Italian prosecutors are reportedly looking into laying manslaughter charges in the fatal sinking of the superyacht Bayesian as a final body, believed to be that of 18-year-old Hannah Lynch, was recovered from the wreckage.
The Italian coast guard said Thursday that it discovered the bodies of five people, including the remains of British tech magnate Mike Lynch. At the time, only one person remained missing — Mike’s daughter, Hannah.
A woman’s remains were found by a recovery team on Friday, the Coast Guard said. The body has not been officially identified, but it’s believed to be Hannah.
Photos showed Italian emergency workers hauling a plastic body bag ashore.
Mike and his family were on board the Bayesian, a 56-metre British-flagged yacht, when it went down in a storm early Monday. The boat had been moored about a kilometre off the Sicilian coast near Porticello. Officials believe the ship was struck by a waterspout, a tornado that forms over water, and sank.
Mike had been celebrating his recent acquittal on fraud charges, stemming from Hewlett Packard’s US$11 billion acquisition of Autonomy, a business software firm he founded. Some of the people who had defended Mike at trial were also celebrating on the boat.
Fifteen people escaped the shipwreck and were rescued by a nearby sailboat, including Mike’s wife, Angela Bacares. One person was found dead on Monday immediately after the shipwreck — the yacht’s Antigua-born chef, Recaldo Thomas.
Six others were deemed missing, though six bodies have now been found as of Friday. Search and rescue divers say they struggled to find the bodies trapped in the yacht’s hull.
“It’s very difficult to move inside the wreckage. Moving just one meter can take up to 24 hours,” said Luca
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