The Regional Disaster Coordinating Council (RDCC) in Central Visayas confirmed on Tuesday that the missing captain of the ill-fated MV Princess of the Stars was among those who died in the tragic sea mishap.
GMA’s Flash Report quoted RDCC officials as saying that the DNA samples submitted by Capt. Florencio Marimon’s family to forensic experts matched one of the recovered cadavers.
The television reports said that Marimon’s relatives already dropped by at the funeral homes in Cebu province where the captain’s body was being kept.
The relatives, however, were not immediately allowed to claim their loved one’s remains, the report added.
Dr Renato Bautista, chief of the National Bureau of Investigation’s Medico-Legal Division, said the family still has to present Marimon’s birth and marriage certificates before they can take home the skipper’s body.
Bautista and a team of 13 other forensic experts are leading the government efforts in identifying all the bodies fished out from the waters off Sibuyan Island.
Aside from the NBI, officials from the International Police and the International Commission on Missing Persons are extending their expertise to hasten the identification of the victims.
Marimon has earlier been deemed by the six-man panel from the Bureau of Marine Inquiry as “negligent" because he decided to pursue sailing amid rough seas triggered by Typhoon “Frank."
The BMI panel said that the ship captain failed to monitor the movement of the passenger ferry relative to the approaching typhoon. Marimon also released a delayed order for the passengers to abandon the ship, according to the panel.
The Sulpicio Lines Inc (SLI), owner of the capsized vessel, was also found to have failed in implementing effectively the Quality and Safety Management System and violated its certificate of public compliance certificate franchise.
The 300-ton vessel left Manila Friday night at the height of typhoon "Frank." It slammed into the wrath of "Frank" in the vicinity of Romblon province while on its way to Cebu in the morning of June 21.
At the time of the incident, Princess was carrying more than 800 passengers and crew. The SLI said 32 survived the tragedy while 312 bodies were recovered so far.
Retrieval operations were halted following the discovery of the endosulfan cargo.
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