The captain of a motorboat which crashed into a sailboat off Italy's Amalfi coast, killing a U.S. tourist, has been jailed for more than four years for manslaughter, his lawyer said Friday.

Adrienne Vaughan, 45, the head of the U.S. branch of Bloomsbury publishing house, died after she was flung from the motorboat in the holiday hotspot in southern Italy in August 2023.

Italian skipper Elio Persico, 32, was sentenced by a Salerno judge to four years and nine months in jail after requesting a plea bargain, lawyer Liberato Mazzola told AFP.

Persico had tested positive for cocaine and alcohol at the time.

Vaughan had been on the boat with her husband and two children, aged 12 and 8, and had been sunbathing when the motorboat crashed into a sailboat carrying party-goers.

She was flung overboard and hit by the propellers. Her daughter was also thrown into the sea but was unharmed.

A video published by the New York Post showed guests on the sailboat during the collision, with one woman asking, "What happened?"

"This boat, it collided with us," a man responds frantically, before running across the deck.

Moments later, another guest says: "She needs help."

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