Captain of speedboat that killed four is remanded
The 77-year-old captain of a speedboat that crashed into a tourist pleasure boat off the coast of Aegina on Tuesday, killing four people including a 5-year-old girl, was remanded in custody on Wednesday after facing an investigating magistrate in Piraeus on charges of manslaughter through neglect and causing a wreck at sea.
The 77-year-old, who is to reappear tomorrow after being given two days to prepare his defense, was heckled outside the magistrate’s office by protesters including the mother of the 5-year-old, who also lost her husband in the collision and brandished photographs of her dead relatives before the defendant as he was escorted out of a police car.
Alexandros Lykourentzos, who is the defendant’s lawyer and is related to him, said the 77-year-old was not guilty of negligence.
Meanwhile some locals on Aegina expressed surprise over the collision, claiming that the defendant was an experienced captain. Several witnesses, however, reported that the speedboat had been moving very fast when it hit the pleasure boat.
As an investigation got under way into the exact circumstances of the collision, the head of the coroner’s service in Piraeus, Ilias Boyiokas, examined the body of the 58-year-old captain of the tourist pleasure boat, who was among the four killed on Tuesday.
He determined that the 58-year-old died on impact and is to examine the other three bodies on Thursday.
Of the 16 people who were injured in the collision, three remained in the hospital yesterday, including a 29-year-old Ukrainian woman whose left leg was partially severed in the crash.
Doctors at Attica’s KAT hospital operated on Tuesday and confirmed on Wednesday that the 29-year-old’s leg had been saved.
A 16-year-old boy who sustained serious facial injuries was to undergo plastic surgery yesterday, also at KAT.
Meanwhile his brother was discharged from the Geniko Kratiko Hospital in Nikaia, near Piraeus, after treatment for minor injuries on Wednesday.
