Name: Manslaughter investigation begins over Sicily yacht wreck | BBC News
Uploaded: 2024-08-24T14:14:35.000Z
Duration: 3 min 11 s
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latest on the sinking of that luxury yacht off Sicily on Monday, in which seven people died.

In the last hour, prosecutors have held their first news conference and during that they confirmed that they have started a manslaughter and shipwreck investigation.

But they stressed that it was in the very early stages and that they are not investigating anyone specifically at the moment.

They also said that the yacht likely sank because of a downburst, not a water spout.

Now this is a localised powerful wind that descends from a thunderstorm and spreads out unpredictability.

Seven people were killed when the vessel went down on Monday.

They included the British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his daughter Hannah.

About 70 people were involved in the search operations each day since the yacht sank during a freak storm.

Here is the moment that those prosecutors announced the nature of their investigation.

I'd like to also inform you officially that the Termini Imerese prosecution has opened a case hypothesising the crime of shipwreck and manslaughter, but we are only at the initial stage of the inquiry so far, so I'm going to confine myself to giving you only that information, but I have to emphasise that the development of the inquiry could actually be of any sort imaginable.

Well here's what the prosecutors had to say about the weather conditions which hit the yacht.

From the information which we have obtained, it's a downburst we're bodies were found in a cabin which were not theirs, but this doesn't give us any kind of certainty about what happened.

We have no idea of the reasons for their all being found in the same cabin.

The prosecutors also said at the moment the captain and the crew who were able to get off the vessel have no legal obligation at the moment to stay in Italy, but they do hope that they will comply with the investigation that is underway.

The prosecutors also during that conference asked how long it would take.

Again, they didn't give any timeline on that.

They were saying that the media wants things to happen quickly, but the investigation will take its time.

Now we will be live in Sicily with our correspondent Bethany Bell who was in that news conference a little later in this hour, but also a reminder that we do have a live page up and running on the BBC News website and app with the very latest on what was said in detail from that news conference that those Italian prosecutors have held in the last hour.

They also made it clear that this is going to be their only news conference that they hold while this investigation continues.

 As I said, you can get all of those details on the BBC News website and app at bbc.co.uk slash news and also on the news app.