Divers found another eight bodies on the cruise ship, the Costa Concordia Wednesday. The bodies were found on one of the passenger decks. Because the weather was getting worse during the dive, the recovery operation had to be postponed after retrieving four of the bodies. A five year old girl from Italy was one of the bodies that was recovered. The others included a man, a woman, and a body whose sex could not be identified.
The identification process could take days and the bodies were taken to a local hospital. Before the bodies were found on Wednesday, there were still fifteen people missing. Only one of the fifteen was a child – Dayana Arlotti. She was on the Costa Concordia with her father, who is still listed as missing. The current death toll from the tragedy is at 32 and that includes the bodies that have already been recovered and those that are still listed as missing and presumed dead. The missing includes people from the United States, France, Germany, and India.
The Costa Concordia struck a sandbar off the coast of Giglio Island. The cruise ship was carrying over 4,200 passengers and crew. The ship started to take on water and eventually ended up turning over on its side. The captain of the ship at the time of the accident was Francesco Schettino, who is currently under house arrest while authorities are investigating charges of abandoning the ship and manslaughter before all of the passengers and other crew were evacuated.
Schettino denies any wrongdoing and says that he did not leave the ship. However, there is an audio recording of the captain allegedly arguing with a coast guard official who was telling him to get back on the ship. There are other ship’s officers that are being investigated, too, as well as three officials from Costa Crociere, an Italian cruise company.
