A cruise ship crashed with a motorboat in Hungary at the weekend, leaving two dead and five others missing — with the captain later detained on suspicions that he failed to stop before the accident and didn’t help the victims, police said Monday.
The captain, a Czech national, was on the Swiss-based cruise ship Saturday night when it struck a motorboat that was carrying eight people on the Danube River late Saturday.
“Based on the suspicion of police, the captain did not alert his crew after the accident, did not follow provisions of the rescue protocol and took no action whatsoever to save the persons afflicted,” police said in a statement.
Authorities uncovered the catastrophe that night when a 35-year-old man was found with a bloody head wound near a main road near Veroce, about 35 miles north of Budapest.
“Police talked to the man and from his initial communication they drew the conclusion that he was probably the victim of some kind of boat accident,” Soma Csecsi, spokesperson for the Budapest police, said this weekend.
Authorities also recovered another man’s body downstream — and found a woman’s corpse further along, near a bridge on the outskirts of Budapest.
Cops also found their damaged boat there.
Disaster response units have been still searching for the five missing people — all of whom were in the smaller craft — as they question dozens of witnesses, including the cruise shop crews, tourists on board and others.
Cops have also found signs of damage on the side of the cruise ship.
With Post wires
