Divers recover body of final missing person from sunken Sicily superyacht
By Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN
Porticello, Italy (CNN) — The body believed to be that of Hannah Lynch, the 18-year-old daughter of British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, has been recovered from the wreck of the Bayesian superyacht that sank off Sicily this week, an Italian coast guard official said Friday.
A CNN team on the ground saw divers carry the final body bag from a rescue boat onto the harbor of Porticello, bringing to an end a five-day search by Italian authorities for the seven victims of the shipwreck.
With the wreck located nearly 50 meters (160 feet) underwater, divers have had only around 12 minutes to reach the site and explore its cabins before having to resurface, complicating their efforts to bring all seven bodies to shore.
After retrieving six bodies from the wreck over the past four days, Lynch’s was the final body being searched for by Italian authorities. The body of her father, Mike Lynch, was retrieved and identified on Thursday, an Italian interior ministry official told Reuters.
The British-flagged vessel, with 22 passengers and crew members on board, sank on Monday after its mast, one of the world’s tallest, broke in half during a violent storm. Fifteen people were rescued on Monday and one body was recovered – thought to be that on the onboard chef Recaldo Thomas.
Six others were initially reported missing: Lynch and his daughter; Morgan Stanley International director Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, Judy Bloomer; and prominent American lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, Neda Morvillo.
Five days on, Italian authorities are still working to understand how the 56-meter (184-foot) yacht sank so quickly. Unverified security camera footage released Wednesday appeared to show the moment that a waterspout – a type of tornado that spun over Sicily early Monday – sank the vessel.
One witness, the owner of a nearby villa looked out to where the Bayesian was anchored, later watched back his CCTV footage that captured the yacht sinking.
“In just 60 seconds, you can see the ship disappear,” he told Italian outlet ANSA. “You can see clearly what’s happening. There was nothing that could be done for the vessel. It disappeared in a very short time.”
The CEO of the firm that owns the vessel’s manufacturer has, however, detailed a string of avoidable “mistakes” he said may have contributed to the ship sinking.
With bad weather forecast, the ship’s crew should have locked down the hull, closed all the doors and hatches and made the guests group together in the ship’s assembly point, Giovanni Constantino, CEO of The Italian Sea Group, told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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CNN’s Radina Gigova contributed to this report.
