Captain of cruise ship that ran aground off Italy arrested
The captain of the 4,200-pasenger luxury cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Tuscany has been arrested, police said Saturday.
Francesco Schettino is being investigated for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship, police said, according to Reuters. He was taken to a jail in the provincial capital Grosseto to await questioning by a magistrate.
At least three people died in the accident and about 40 people are still unaccounted for, revised downward from 70 earlier in the day.
A U.S. State Department official says the latest estimate is that there were 126 Americans among the 4,200-plus people aboard the Costa Concordia. No Americans were injured, the official said.
This is the second fatal accident involving a Costa ship in the past two years. In February 2010, Costa Europa collided with a pier in Egypt, killing three crewmembers.
Updated 1:35 p.m. ET:
Italian authorities were questioning the captain of the 4,200-passenger luxury cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Tuscany, CNN reports.
Authorities want to know why the ship didn’t issue a mayday call during the accident near the Italian island of Giglio on Friday night, according to the report.