Captain who saw the sinking of a yacht helped rescue survivors

A boat captain in Sicily recalls rescuing several survivors just moments after a fatal yacht accident in Italy left at least one person dead and six people missing.

The Bayes ship, a 56-metre superyacht with 22 passengers on board, was at anchor when a tornado, known as a waterspout, formed over the water and struck the superyacht before it lost its balance and sank, Sicilian news agency Ansa reports.

Karsten Borner, captain of a nearby boat, saw the boat sink “a few minutes” after the impact, he told Italian news channel Rai, according to the BBC.

“All of this happened in a really short period of time,” he continued.

“The storm had passed. We noticed that the ship behind us had gone,” Borner said in a video interview with the BBC on Monday. “And then we saw a red flare, so my first mate and I went to the position and found this life raft drifting [with] 15 people inside.”

According to Borner, four people were injured, three of them seriously.

“We brought them to our ship and then communicated with the coast guard. Then after some time the coast guard came and picked up the injured. [up]”, said the captain of the nearby ship.

Borner recalled using a flashlight to see that the Bayesian ship had capsized. He noticed that there was a “little baby” in the life raft, later identified as a one-year-old English girl named Sophie.

“It was a great disaster,” he concluded.

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The child was taken to Palermo's Ansa children's hospital, according to Corriere Della Sera. Her mother was identified by local authorities to PEOPLE as Charlotte Golunski.

Golunski told the Italian newspaper the Republic Due to the stormy sea, she lost Sophie for a short time, but later found her again.

“I held her above water with all my strength and stretched my arms up to prevent her from drowning,” the mother told the newspaper.

She added: “It was very dark. I couldn't keep my eyes open in the water. I screamed for help, but all I could hear around me were the screams of the others.”

The baby's father, James Emsley, survived the incident, a Sicilian civil protection official told Sky News.

According to the Associated Press, the Coast Guard reported that there were 12 passengers and 10 crew members on board at the time the yacht sank.

One person was found dead near the yacht and has since been identified as the boat's cook, according to a local outlet. Palermo today and the BBC.

The six still missing include British technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his daughter Hannah. His wife Angela Bacares was among those rescued, local sources said.

Just a few months ago, Lynch, the founder of British technology company Autonomy, was acquitted of all charges that he inflated his company's profits ahead of an $11 billion deal with Hewlett-Packard, TechCrunch and Associated Press report.

In a statement released to the media at the time, the tech giant said he was “looking forward to returning to the UK and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovation in my field.”

PEOPLE has reached out to the Italian Coast Guard for further comment, but there was no immediate response.