The search for six missing passengers
in 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.
Coast guards are also taking part in the operation with their
team of divers, as well as with helicopters and cutters.
The bodies are believed to be trapped inside the sailboat,
rescuers said.
The president of Morgan Stanley International, Jonathan Bloomer,
has been confirmed as one of six passengers missing after the
56-metre-long luxury sailboat, the Bayesian, sank off
Porticello, at dawn on Monday.
The other missing passengers are his wife Anne Elizabeth Judith
Bloomer, British tycoon Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter
Hannah, Lynch's lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Nada
Morvillo.
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 at a depth of some 50 metres, half a mile from the
coast.
The victim was later identified as Ricardo Thomas, who worked on
board as 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.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
