Costa Concordia Final Moments Detailed In New Court Papers

Court Docs Detail Tragic Final Moments From Costa Concordia Victims
Relatives sail on January 13, 2013 by the Costa Concordia cruise ship keeled over off the Italian island of Giglio, for commemorations marking the first anniversary of the disaster. Survivors, grieving relatives and locals on the island of Giglio gathered on January 13 to mark the first anniversary of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster, which claimed 32 victims. AFP PHOTO / ALBERTO PIZZOLI (Photo credit should read FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images)
Relatives sail on January 13, 2013 by the Costa Concordia cruise ship keeled over off the Italian island of Giglio, for commemorations marking the first anniversary of the disaster. Survivors, grieving relatives and locals on the island of Giglio gathered on January 13 to mark the first anniversary of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster, which claimed 32 victims. AFP PHOTO / ALBERTO PIZZOLI (Photo credit should read FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images)

Sixty pages of court documents presented by the prosecution to an Italian court earlier this week have revealed new details about the final moments of travelers and crew aboard the Costa Concordia, the cruise ship that partially sank off the coast of Italy in 2012, resulting in the deaths of 32 people.

The prosecution is trying to prove that the ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, should be sent to trial for charges of manslaughter and abandoning ship.

Tragic stories from the court papers include that of a father and his 5-year-old daughter who drowned after being unable to find space on the ship's life boats, the Telegraph reports.

Additionally, according to the Mirror, a woman on her honeymoon reportedly managed to get on a life boat but later drowned after she was instructed to get back on the ship because the vessels were deemed unsafe.

Other stories reflect acts of heroism, the Mirror notes. A member of the ship's crew, for example, is said to have drowned while waiting to help launch the last of the life boats.

As the BBC reported at the time, the Costa Concordia hit a patch of rocks in January 2012 and started taking in water, causing the ship to begin capsizing. The ship's owners accused Schettino of having caused the accident by trying to sail closer to the island of Giglio in a move that was unauthorized. The captain also reportedly departed the ship before all the passengers had been evacuated, and he allegedly ignored orders to return.

Schettino claimed that he was distracted by a phone call to a person he was trying to salute on the shores of the island, but he argued that he saved lives by redirecting the ship so that it avoided a head-on impact, NBC News reported at the time.

Still, the captain has continued to draw ire with claims that he intends to command a ship again in the future, CBS notes.

Schettino has also claimed that his tell-all book will show that he has been misrepresented and did try to return to the ship to help with rescue efforts.

According to the Associated Press, court-appointed experts produced a 270-page report on the shipwreck that put the lion share of the blame on the captain. But the report also faulted the crew for contributing to the disaster through its own mistakes.

The Costa Concordia remains half-sunk and perched on rocks off the island of Giglio. Because the area is a marine sanctuary, environmental concerns about toxins leaking into the water have delayed the ship's removal.

Before You Go

Costa Concordia Anniversary

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot