Captain of sunken Lynch family yacht put under investigation, source says

[August 26, 2024]  ROME (Reuters) -Italian prosecutors have placed under investigation the captain of the superyacht that sank off Sicily last week in a storm, killing British tech magnate Mike Lynch and six other people, a judicial source said on Monday.  

Rescue personnel transport what is believed to be the body of Hannah Lynch, daughter of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, at the scene where a luxury yacht sank, off the coast of Porticello, near the Sicilian city of Palermo, Italy, August 23, 2024. REUTERS/Louiza Vradi/File Photo

James Cutfield, a 51-year old New Zealand national, is being investigated for manslaughter and shipwreck, the source said, confirming earlier reports by Italian media.

Being placed under investigation in Italy does not imply guilt and does not mean formal charges will necessarily follow. Notices to people under investigation need to be sent out before authorities can carry out the autopsies on the bodies of the dead.

The decision was made after Cutfield was interrogated for a second time. Reuters has been unable to contact Cutfield.

It is still unclear whether other members of the crew or other people will also be put under investigation along with the captain.

The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56-metre-long (184-foot) yacht, was carrying 22 people when it capsized and sank on Monday within minutes of being hit by a pre-dawn storm while anchored off northern Sicily.

Fifteen people survived, including Lynch's wife, whose company owned the Bayesian. Lynch's 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, was among those who died.

While the yacht had been hit by a sudden meteorological event, it was plausible that crimes of multiple manslaughter and causing a shipwreck through negligence had been committed, the head of the public prosecutor's office of Termini Imerese, Ambrogio Cartosio, said on Saturday.

Maritime law gives a captain full responsibility for the ship, crew, and all on board.

Cutfield and his eight surviving crew members have made no public comment yet on the disaster.

"The Bayesian was built to go to sea in any weather", Franco Romani, a nautical architect who was part of the team that designed it told daily La Stampa in an interview published on Monday.

He said the yacht could have taken on water from a side hatch that was left open.

(Reporting by Giulia Segreti and Giselda Vagnoni in Rome and Wladimiro Pantaleone in Palermo; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Angus MacSwan)

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