Souvenir Hunters get caught stealing from the Costa Concordia

This week has seen Italy appear a lot in the cruise headlines: At the beginning of the week for the banning of the cruise ships in Venice, and now the latest new is 4 men of the salvage group Titan who were involved in the raising of the Costa Concordia have been caught on board stealing souvenirs of the ship.

One British Man, an Irish Man and 2 South Africans who worked for the salvage company were caught on board at 1.30 in the morning on deck 8 (Portugal Deck) when no salvage was taking place. They were spotted on CCTV which is positioned to watch the ship and the security firm alerted the police. The men were caught carrying a rucksack with the Costa Concordia emblem and claim they were only looking for souvenirs and were not planning on taking any valuables. It has not been disclosed as to what was inside the rucksack despite the deck they were found on having outside and executive cabins.

All 4 men have been dismissed from their positions and are accused of theft and breach of a crime zone, they have been bailed and are waiting for a court date.

This is not the first time Costa Concordia has been targeted by thieves as in March 2012 (just 3 months after the tragic sinking of the ship) the iconic engraved brass bell was stolen from 8 metres below sea and weighed 10kgs. Also just a couple of months after the sinking items such as cutlery, poker chips, pictures, crockery etc all appeared on ebay.

I find this very upsetting hearing how people are trying to cash in, or have the mentality to steal from such a tragic scene which lost 32 people’s lives. Why would you steal from a ship full of scared and extremely frightened people who will live with those memories for the rest of their lives? Sometimes I really wonder about the world we live in and surely there is a better way to make money then to benefit from someone else’s tragedy.