Schettino left ship while others onboard

(ANSA) - Florence, August 30 - Former Costa Concordia captain Francesco Schettino abandoned ship even though he knew that several people were still on the left side of the vessel, or at least was unsure about whether they had all been rescued, judges that oversaw his appeals trial said.
    Explaining their decision in May to uphold Schettino's 16-year sentence for the 2012 shipwreck that left 32 dead off Tuscany's Giglio Island, the judges also said the former skipper was not following a mapped out route at the time, and instead was following his own "sailor's instinct...relying on his own ability".
    Schettino was in charge of the 290m-long cruise liner with more than 4,000 passengers and crew on board when it hit rocks off Giglio, tearing a gash in its side and causing it to slowly capsize. He has been dubbed 'captain coward' in the Italian media for abandoning ship before all his passengers were evacuated in what was Italy's worst postwar maritime disaster.
    Hundreds of passengers were injured, and Concordia also claimed the life of a Spanish diver during the salvage operation, taking the total death toll to 33.