Nine months after the sinking of the Bayesian, the eighth victim is recorded.
During the recovery operations of the yacht belonging to English tycoon Mark Lynch, which sank in the sea of Porticello during a storm on August 19th, the diver Robcornelis Maria Huijben Uiben, 39, Dutch, lost his life. The incident, still to be reconstructed, will be handled by Raffaele Cammarano, the same prosecutor investigating the shipwreck that claimed the lives of the tycoon, his daughter Hannah, Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy, Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda, and Thomas Recaldo, the onboard cook. Another 15 people survived.
According to initial reconstructions, the diver was working on cutting the boom at a depth of 49 meters. After a failed attempt with wrenches, he descended with other colleagues using a torch, a sort of blowtorch. Once the cut was made, the boom might have acted as a lever, and material, possibly a piece of metal, could have struck the victim. The images of the operations, captured with underwater cameras, were interrupted at that point. Then the alarm was raised, and the body was recovered. At the time of the incident, coast guard soldiers were on the dock. Initially, there were talks of an underwater explosion: a circumstance not confirmed, while the hypothesis of a sudden illness was dismissed. It is now possible that the recovery operations of the yacht will be delayed, that the site will be seized, and that an autopsy will be performed on the victim's body.
Just yesterday, the Hebo Lift 10, the large crane that will bring the Bayesian to the surface, arrived at the shipwreck site. Departing from Termini Imerese, where it had arrived last Saturday from Rotterdam, the Hebo Lift 10 joined the Hebo Lift 2, which had been anchored in the area where the wreck is located for several days. The second floating pontoon, with a gross tonnage of 5,695 tons, is one of the most powerful maritime cranes in Europe. In recent days, it completed the assembly of heavy lifting equipment and the recruitment of other experts involved in the wreck recovery project, which was expected to conclude by the end of the month. However, the timeline will certainly be extended. From the analysis of the vessel, investigators hope to find answers to unravel the many questions related to the shipwreck and try to determine whether the sinking was caused by a chain of human errors, as initially hypothesized by the Termini Imerese Prosecutor's Office, or if there are other possible avenues to explore. Three crew members have been placed under investigation for multiple manslaughter and negligent shipwreck: the New Zealand captain James Cutfield, the chief engineer Tim Parker Eaton, and the sailor Matthew Griffith, who was on watch on the bridge the night of the storm.
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