ROME (AP) — The captain of the shipwrecked Costa Concordia says he was distracted by a phone conversation just before the cruise liner crashed into a reef off an Italian island.
Francesco Schettino told private Italian TV channel Canale 5 in an interview broadcast Tuesday that the collision which led to the loss of 32 lives was a "banal accident" in which "destiny" played a role.
Schettino said he blamed himself "for having been distracted" by the phone call with someone on Giglio island as the ship's hull was gashed by a reef on the night of Jan. 13 .
The Concordia took on water and began listing, and some of the 4,200 people aboard jumped into the sea to swim to the island.
