PORTICELLO, Italy: Divers searching for six missing people following the sinking of a superyacht off Sicily have found four bodies, a source close to the search told AFP Wednesday. The discovery brings the confirmed death toll from the disaster off the Italian island to five, after the body of a man believed to be the yacht’s chef was recovered hours after the sinking on Monday. UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his teenage daughter Hannah are among the six people missing.
The bodies of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his daughter Hannah were among those found Wednesday, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported. No further details or confirmation were available at the time of publication. The 56-metre (185 feet) British-flagged “Bayesian” had been anchored some 700 meters off Porticello when it was struck by a waterspout — akin to a mini-tornado — during a pre-dawn storm.
It sank within minutes. Fifteen people were rescued, including Lynch’s wife and a woman with a one-year-old baby. But the tech entrepreneur and his daughter, his lawyer Christopher Morvillo and his wife Neda, and Jonathan Bloomer, the chair of Morgan Stanley International, and his wife Judy, were all reported missing.
Shortly before the news emerged of the bodies found, an AFP reporter saw more than half a dozen boats leave the port of Porticello all within minutes of each other. Some of them later returned with body bags then carried by emergency service workers into a tent on the quay. Firef.