Motin has pleaded not guilty and has been held in pre-trial custody.<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Tom Little told the jury that despite being on \u201can obvious collision course\u201d with the Stena Immaculate, Motin \u201cdid not deviate his vessel from its path and the impending catastrophe that lay ahead\u201d.<\/p>\n
Pernia \u201cwould still be alive if it was not for the grossly negligent conduct of the man in the dock\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe captain owed him a duty of care to keep him safe and the defendant breached that duty of care and caused his death,\u201d Little said, noting Motin was on \u201csole watch duty at the time\u201d.<\/p>\n
Motin also sent his wife a WhatsApp conversation to tell her \u201cthere had been a disaster\u201d and that he will be \u201cguilty\u201d.<\/p>\n
His wife advised him to \u201cthink of an alibi and not to take the blame\u201d, the prosecution said.<\/p>\n
Jurors heard Motin was \u201chighly trained\u201d in seafaring. A sailor since 1985, he first became a captain in 2005 and had captained Solong for 15 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe could, and should, have acted differently,\u201d Little argued.<\/p>\n
Visibility on the day of the accident, March 10, was \u201cpatchy\u201d according to a report by the UK\u2019s Maritime Accidents Investigations Branch.<\/p>\n
\u2018What just hit us?\u2019<\/p>\n
At the speed he was travelling, Little maintained that Motin \u201cwould have seen the Stena Immaculate approximately 12 minutes\u201d before the crash and the tanker \u201cwould have been visible on the radar 36 minutes before the collision\u201d.<\/p>\n
The jury was shown video and audio CCTV of the moments after the collision, in which loud screaming and emergency alarms can be heard.<\/p>\n
An American seaman aboard the Stena Immaculate could be heard to say: \u201cHoly shit, what just hit us?\u201d<\/p>\n
Crew members tried to locate Pernia before abandoning ship, but could not access many parts due to the rapidly spreading fire.<\/p>\n
The front of the ship where Pernia was working \u201chad been completely destroyed by the fire\u201d, Little said.<\/p>\n
The accident caused thousands of barrels of jet fuel to spill from the Stena Immaculate.<\/p>\n
The Solong was carrying 15 containers of plastic pellets and more than 16 tonnes of the nurdles were removed from beaches in northeastern Lincolnshire in the aftermath, according to the local council.<\/p>\n
Pernia was never found, with search parties eventually called off 12 hours later at \u201cthe limit of his survivability in the water\u201d, Little said.<\/p>\n
The owners of both ships have lodged civil suits against each other, which are expected to be heard in October.<\/p>\n
-Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Motin has pleaded not guilty and has been held in pre-trial custody. Prosecutor Tom Little told the jury…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[95,28064,14801,13381,37055,8604,3549,634,2079,42,27501,43,529,17286,26481,8527,8221,3008,137611,17093,108678,1865,6859,40,38,41,39,54,20881,1613,5977],"class_list":["post-231633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-and","tag-avoidable","tag-british","tag-captain","tag-cargo","tag-caused","tag-crash","tag-death","tag-fire","tag-headlines","tag-heard","tag-news","tag-north","tag-operation","tag-prosecutors","tag-rescue","tag-russian","tag-sea","tag-seaman","tag-ship","tag-tanker","tag-today","tag-told","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trial","tag-triggered","tag-uk","tag-which"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}