The motorboat that crashed into the Tortuga tourist sailing ship off the coast on Thursday afternoon was «going at high speed»… Already a season ticket holder? Login here!
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The motorboat that crashed into the Tortuga tourist sailing ship on Thursday afternoon “was going at high speed”, off the coast of Amalfi Coastresulting in the death of the American publisher Adrienne Vaughan. This was reported to the investigators by some of the 70 foreign tourists heard with summary information from the Coast Guard, precisely because from the 40-metre motor vessel on which they were celebrating a wedding they saw the goiter driven by Aelius Persian, the skipper of Massa Lubrense now under investigation by the Salerno prosecutor’s office for manslaughter and culpable shipwreck. An initial estimate confirms that the motorboat was traveling in the stretch of sea between the Fiordo di Furore and Capo di Conca at no less than 20 knots, i.e. about 40 kilometers per hour. While the Tortuga proceeded at 9 knots, as reported by the “Ais” (Automatic Identification System), a sort of “black box” that allows you to plot course and speed.
AUTOMATIC PILOT
It is not excluded that Persico had engaged the automatic pilot (supplied on that boat), that there may have been a malfunction. The experts, who will be appointed shortly by the prosecutor, will also verify this aspect in the analysis of the 6-metre hull seized and pulled out of the water. Perhaps, counting on the autopilot, the skipper could have allowed himself a greater distraction; even if the navigation code provides that whoever is in command of a boat must always look at the sea. The victim’s husband, Mike White, told investigators that the 30-year-old instead “was always with his cell phone in his hand”. For this reason, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has requested the acquisition of his telephone records and could soon seize the smartphone. In addition, Persico tested positive for alcohol and cocaine from toxicological tests. Another aspect that emerges from the investigations into the dynamics of the accident is that the 45-year-old New Yorker was sunbathing at the bow when the speedboat crashed into the sailing ship at high speed and was thrown several meters away. The injuries sustained in the impact would have been fatal for her. Therefore, she would not have been severed by the propellers. But the autopsy examination of the woman will clarify this aspect.
THE ARRIVAL OF GRANDFATHER
They are technical investigations at the moment. The chief prosecutor of Salerno, Giuseppe Borrelli, during the press conference held yesterday in the Harbor Master’s Office, remains quite buttoned up on the possibility of hearing the two American children, who have been at Villa Giulia in Massa Lubrense since yesterday in the company of their paternal grandfather, and on the timing for the assignment of the task to perform the autopsy on the mangled body of the victim. The Salerno Public Prosecutor’s Office has appointed a consultant to investigate Persico’s ability to drive the boat at the time of the collision.
Meanwhile, Persico’s lawyer, Liberato Mazzola, met the 30-year-old yesterday afternoon who was discharged from hospital during the night between Friday and Saturday. The lawyer contacted three consultants who will have to support him in defending the skipper: a coroner, a naval engineer and a nautical technician. «My client – he said – is very, very tried. Destroyed by what happened: he too is a family man and has children ». Therefore: «We remain extremely cautious with regard to the dynamics of the accident. I have already indicated that there are several points which, of course, the ongoing investigation will help to clarify. It is necessary to await the outcome of the autopsy examination, of the technical-kinematic appraisals of the accident ». “My client – adds the lawyer – promptly answered the questions that the prosecutor posed to him in the immediacy of the facts in order to contribute to the reconstruction of what happened”.
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