British tech tycoon Mike Lynch is among seven tourists missing after his luxury superyacht was struck by a freak waterspout and sank off the coast of Sicily early this morning. The yacht was anchored near Porticello, close to Palermo, when a tornado hit just before 5 a.m., causing the vessel to quickly sink. Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, 57, was among the fifteen people rescued from the 180-foot yacht, which reportedly belonged to her. The yacht was carrying ten crew members, the owner, and eleven guests at the time of the incident.
The 35-year-old woman described the terrifying moment she temporarily lost her daughter in the chaos of the waves before managing to reunite with her and bring them both to safety. Six passengers, including British and American citizens, remain unaccounted for as divers continue their search of the wreckage, located 160 feet below the water’s surface.
Tragically, the body of a man, believed to be a Canadian national who was working as the yacht’s chef, was found floating near the vessel earlier today. There are growing fears that the missing passengers may have become trapped in their cabins, with divers reportedly seeing “bodies through the portholes” of the yacht, according to information available.
This tragedy occurs just weeks after Mike Lynch was acquitted of criminal charges by a jury in San Francisco in June, following a 12-year legal battle related to the $11 billion sale of his company, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. Lynch, once a billionaire and often referred to as “Britain’s Bill Gates,” made his fortune through Autonomy, which developed software based on the Bayesian mathematical theory, the namesake of the yacht.
