The search for six missing passengers
following the shipwreck of a luxury sailboat off Porticello,
near Palermo, resumed early on Tuesday morning.
Expert teams of firefighter divers have reached the location
from Rome, Sassari and Palermo to inspect the boat's wreck,
located at a depth of 50 metres.
Bodies are believed to be trapped inside the sailboat, rescuers
said.
The president of Morgan Stanley International, Jonathan Bloomer,
is among the six passengers missing after the 56-metre-long
luxury sailboat, the Bayesian, sank off Porticello at dawn on
Monday, according to reports published by British media outlets
which have been confirmed by the head of the Sicilian civil
protection Salvo Cocina.
Cocina said Bloomer and his wife, along with British tycoon Mike
Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, Lynch's layer Chris
Morvillo and his wife Nada Morvillo are on the list of missing
passengers.
The Bayesian, with 22 people on board, sank after a tornado hit
the area.
Coast guards rescued 15 passengers but seven others were
reported missing, including one person whose body was recovered
later on Monday morning after firefighter divers reached the
boat located about half a mile from the coast.
The victim was identified as Ricardo Thomas, who worked on
board as a chef.
One of the survivors is a one-year-old child who was taken to
Palermo's paediatric hospital.
British tycoon Mike Lynch, 59, founder of the multinational
computer company Autonomy, is among the six people missing.
Called the 'British Bill Gates', Lynch had ended up at the
centre of a high-profile fraud case and in June a US jury
acquitted him of all charges relating to the sale of his
software company to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
His wife Angela Bacares was among those rescued.
According to port authorities investigating the accident,
coordinated by prosecutors in Termini Imerese, there were 12
passengers and 10 crew members on board the Bayesian at the time
of the accident, which is believed to have taken place between 4
and 5 in the morning on Monday when the area was hit by a
violent storm.
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