The captain of the Costa Concordia looked as if he might kill himself shortly after the doomed cruise ship ran aground, his second-in-command testified Tuesday.
After Capt. Francesco Schettino escaped in a life raft, he stood on coastal rocks and surveyed the chaos caused when his giant ship crashed, officer Dimitrios Christidis said.
Christidis told a court in Grosseto, Italy, that he urged the captain to get the 40 survivors who had made it to Giglio island off Tuscany in that life raft to safer ground. But Schettino wouldn’t budge.
“I told him to take away passengers because they were out in the open, it was cold. But Schettino” — nicknamed “Captain Coward” — “replied: ‘I have to be here to organize the rescue,’ ” Christidis said
“It was then that I thought he might commit suicide,” Christidis said. “And then I said, ‘Here we cannot organize anything, we are on a rock.’ ”
Outside court, Schettino told reporters he wasn’t suicidal, but was talking on a cellphone with an Italian coast guard official, Gregorio De Falco.
A tape recording disclosed after the January 2012 crash showed that De Falco told Schettino to return to his ship and save passengers. “Get the f–k back on board!” he was heard saying.
On Monday, the ship’s radio operator testified Schettino waited for an hour after running aground before giving an order to abandon ship.
Flavio Spadavecchia said he “waited and waited” for Schettino to order him to send a “pan-pan” message that would alert potential rescuers.
“I approached the bridge and he just signalled me, ‘No,’ ” Spadavecchia said. “I asked at least once, maybe twice.”
Police on shore realized what was happening after passengers began calling from their phones, he said.
Spadavecchia said the captain eventually gave the order to abandon ship after he overheard his own bridge officers talking to coast guard officials about the ship’s plight.
Schettino is charged with manslaughter and abandoning ship during the disaster that killed 32.