The FBI has started a criminal investigation targeting the container ship that crashed in a road bridge in Baltimore last month, collapsing it and killing six people, according to the media reports.
The Washington Post described it as a criminal probe and cited two unnamed US officials as saying the investigation will look at least in part at whether the crew knew the ship had serious systems problems when it left the port.
‘As a matter of policy, it does not confirm or deny investigations’, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
But it did say its agents were aboard the Singapore-flagged Dali container ship, which stays pinned beneath the wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge nearly three weeks after the disaster.
‘The FBI is present aboard the cargo ship Dali conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity. There is no other public information available and we will have no further comment’, it said in a statement.
The bridge, a transit route into the busy city and port of Baltimore, was destroyed in seconds on March 26 when the Dali lost power and drifted into a support column.
The ship had managed to issue a Mayday call in the moments before the collision which gave police time to stop traffic on the bridge, likely saving lives.
Unfortunately, an eight-man construction crew repairing potholes on the bridge could not be reached in time and plummeted with the tons of concrete and twisted steel into the cold waters below.
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