Grim details of Concordia deaths detailed in court

The Italian court trying the captain of the Costa Concordia heard grim details about how the 32 victims of the shipwreck drowned, some after diving or falling into the sea from the capsized cruise liner when lifeboats were no longer accessible.

A court official read out the names of the deceased passengers and crew members, and described how each one died, quoting verbatim from the indictment of the Concordia’s captain, Francesco Schettino. The veteran Italian mariner is the sole defendant in the long-awaited trial, which is being held in a theatre in the Tuscan town of Grosseto.

Schettino is charged with manslaughter, causing the January 2012 shipwreck off the Tuscan island of Giglio, and abandoning ship with “hundreds of passengers and crew still aboard, unable to care for themselves or in need of coordination as the ship’s tilt increased”, the official said.

The Concordia, on a week-long Mediterranean cruise, speared a jagged granite reef when, prosecutors allege, Schettino steered the ship too close to Giglio’s rocky shores as a favour to a crewman whose relatives live on the island.

Also present was Domnica Cemortan, the Moldovan dancer who was with Mr Schettino on the night of the disaster.

The reef sliced a 230-foot gash in the hull. Seawater rushed in, causing the ship to rapidly lean to one side until it capsized, then drifted to a rocky stretch of seabed just outside the island’s tiny port.

Survivors have described an evacuation that was so confused and delayed that by the time it got under way lifeboats on one side of the Concordia could no longer be launched because the vessel was already badly listing.

The reading of the list of the victims began with the death of a Frenchman, Francis Servel, who “not having found a place on the lifeboat, threw himself into the sea without a life vest”. He was “sucked toward the bottom of the whirlpool produced by the final flipping over on the right side of the ship, and then died due to asphyxiation”.

Survivors recounted how Servel had given his wife his life vest because she didn’t know how to swim.

The bodies of victims No 31 and 32 were never found, but after a long, futile search of the ship’s interior and the nearby waters, they were declared dead.

One of them was a middle-aged Italian passenger, Maria Grazia Trecarichi, who, with no place on a lifeboat, and “while waiting to be rescued” while wearing a life vest, “slid off into the sea because of the progressive tilt of the boat” and presumably drowned, the court official said, reading from the indictment.

Other victims drowned aboard, as violently swirling water rose inside the ship.

It was the first full one- day hearing in the trial, which is expected to last into next year.

Earlier, lawyers for Schettino said they were making a last-ditch attempt to reach a plea bargain in the case.

One of his lawyers, Donato Laino, told reporters the defence wanted a deal that would see Schettino plead guilty in exchange for a three-year, five-month sentence.

Schettino risks up to 20 years, if found guilty of manslaughter and the other charges.

Some of the 4,200 passengers and crew who were aboard the Concordia said Schettino shouldn’t be the only person tried.