Russian ship captain guilty of killing crew member in crash with tanker in North Sea

A Russian captain has been found guilty of killing a crew member when his ship crashed into an oil tanker off the coast of East Yorkshire.

Vladimir Motin, 59, was on sole watch duty in March last year when the oil tanker, Solong, collided with the anchored Stena Immaculate near the Humber Estuary.

The resulting fire instantly killed Solong crew member Mark Angelo Pernia, 38.

The Filipino victim had a five-year-old child never met his second kid, who was born two months after his death.

It took a jury at the Old Bailey eight hours to find Motin, 59, from St Petersburg, guilty of his manslaughter by gross negligence.

Detective Chief Superintendent Craig Nicholson told the Press Association is was a ‘simple, senseless tragedy’.

He said: ‘It’s a miracle that there weren’t more fatalities or serious injuries.

‘Similarly, this could have been a huge environmental catastrophe. The Solong burned for eight days following the collision.

‘There were people on the deck of the Stena Immaculate at the point of impact. One crew member was up a mast changing a light fitting.’

The Rotterdam-bound Solong, which was 130 metres long, departed Grangemouth in Scotland at 9.05pm on March 9.

Soloing’s 14 crew members were tasked with carrying alcoholic spirits and some hazardous substances, including empty sodium cyanide containers.

The Stena Immaculate was 183.2 metres long and was transporting 220,000 barrels of JetA1 high-grade aviation fuel from Greece to the UK.

The two vessels crashed on March 10, causing the Stena Immaculate’s aviation fuel to leak, sparking a fire that spread to both ships.

It was alleged during the trial that Motin was responsible for multiple failures in the lead-up to the disaster and then lied about what took place on the bridge.

The Russian captain did ‘absolutely nothing’ to stop his container ship crashing into a US oil tanker despite being on an ‘obvious collision course’ for more than half an hour, the court previously heard. 

Motin had a ‘constellation of information’ telling him he needed to act but did the opposite and failed to avert the collision, jurors were told.

Motin denied gross negligence manslaughter.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

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