Many of the lawyers for the survivors of the capsized cruise ship are pushing for drug tests to be taken. It is believed that the captain may have done cocaine while aboard the ship because some traces of cocaine were found on a sample of his hair. However, the consultant stood by the results. The results proved that there were no drugs in Captain Francesco Shettino’s system. Urine samples and hair samples were performed.
The cruise ship slammed right into a reef by the Tuscan Island on January 13th. Because of the events that took place, Codacons, the Italian consumer protection group, chose to represent some of the survivors who were aboard the ship when it abruptly crashed into the reef. Codacons has reported that traces of cocaine were, in fact, found on a hair sample but the urine samples of Schettino came up completely free of drugs. They do believe that this finding is quite odd which is why they wanted some new tests to take place due to the possibility of contamination.
An expert, Marcello Chiarotti, says that cocaine was not found inside of the hair nor was it found in the urine of the captain. He said that if there were traces of cocaine found in either the hair or the urine, it would be obvious that the captain had used cocaine at some point.
In the meantime, Schettino, the captain of the ship, is currently under house arrest as the investigation continues on. He is currently under investigation for manslaughter, along with abandoning the ship, as the saying goes, a captain is supposed to be the last person off of the ship. In the meantime, a lawyer for Schettino says he always believed that Schettino never took any drugs. Schettino insists that he never abandoned his ship. He also claims that the reef was not marked which is why he slammed right into it. There were some survivors of the shipwreck but there were also people who lost their life that day. It is believed that about 32 people perished due to the shipwreck and nearly 15 of those bodies have yet to be found in the water.
Chiarotti, however, is confident in the results, believing they will be able to clear up this problem very shortly. He says that he has absolutely no doubts.
The cruise ship, named the Concordia, carried a little over 4,000 passengers and crew members for its weekly cruise. It crashed directly into the reef while dinner took place, just a few hours after it left the Italian port. Passengers began panicking almost instantly because the ship began to shift to one side right away. The evacuation of the ship did not take place for an entire hour later, which left some passengers to jump off of the boat and into the water as the lifeboats could not reach the ship after a certain period of time.
There were many divers searching the water and areas in which the wreckage of the ship was located as a means of finding some people who were reported missing. Some bodies were recovered but some, unfortunately, were not.