Stephen Chamberlain, who recently stood trial alongside missing U.K. tech billionaire Mike Lynch, was fatally struck by a car just days before the British entrepreneur disappeared after the sinking of his yacht off the coast of Sicily.
Chamberlain, who was once the vice president of finance at Lynch’s former company, Autonomy, was out for a run on Saturday when he was hit by a car in Cambridgeshire, England, his lawyer Gary Lincenberg told CNN.
He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later.
“He was a courageous man with unparalleled integrity. We deeply miss him,” he said.
“Steve fought successfully to clear his good name at trial earlier this year, and his good name now lives on through his wonderful family,” Lincenberg concluded.
The driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is cooperating with law enforcement, BBC News reported.
The deadly incident came just days before Lynch’s superyacht, nicknamed the Bayesian, sank off the coast of Porticello, near Palermo. Lynch had been celebrating his recent acquittal in one of Silicon Valley’s biggest-ever fraud cases when a waterspout formed in the exact spot where the 184-foot vessel had been moored.
Lynch, and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, were still missing on Tuesday alongside four others. They were identified as Christopher Morvillo of Clifford Chance, who served as Lynch’s lawyer, and Morvillo’s wife, Neda. Chairman of Morgan Stanley International, Jonathan Bloomer, also the former head of the Autonomy audit committee, and his wife, Judy, were also unaccounted for more than 24 hours after the sinking.
Lynch — once hailed as Britain’s king of technology — and Chamberlain were recently co-defendants in a fraud trial over the 2011 sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion. They were accused of cooking their books to make the sale happen, and both faced one count of conspiracy and 14 counts of wire fraud.
In June, a jury in San Francisco acquitted the pair of all charges.
With News Wire Services
