A crowdfunded submarine sank near Copenhagen, Denmark, on Friday and a woman remains missing and feared dead.
Peter Madsen, a Danish inventor who owned the submarine, was arrested on a manslaughter charge in connection with the missing journalist, Kim Wall, 30, The Guardian reported. Wall, a freelance journalist, had been writing about Madsen and the submarine before her disappearance.
"The owner of the submarine was arrested and is accused of having killed the Swedish woman without intent," a Copenhagen Police statement said, according to The Guardian. "He denies the allegations and explains that he left the woman on the end of the Refshaleøen Island."
Madsen reportedly told police that Wall left the submarine at the island after 3 ½ hours into the trip Thursday night, The Guardian said.
Authorities charged that the submarine named the Nautilus was deliberately sunk but did not elaborate on why, the BBC News reported. Madsen disputed the claim, saying that the submarine developed technical problems.
The BBC News wrote that the Nautilus was raised but Wall was not found and investigation into her disappearance continued.
"We're still hoping that we'll find Kim Wall alive, but we are preparing ourselves for the fact that she may not be," Copenhagen police homicide chief Jens Moller said, according to the BBC News.
Described in some local media reports as a "hobby engineer," Madsen had claimed in 2008 that the Nautilus was the world's largest privately built submarine, the BBC News wrote. Madsen started donation-funded Rocket-Madsens Space Laboratory, in hopes of launching a human being into space.
The Sun reported that Wall was a native of Sweden, and studied at Sorbonne University in Paris, the London School of Economics, and Columbia University in New York. She graduated with her master's in journalism in 2013, The Sun said.
Wall has lived in New York and Peking and has written stories for the New York Times, The Guardian, the South China Morning Post and Vice Magazine.
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