OLD LYME, Conn. (AP) — Authorities on Friday found the bodies of both men who had been missing for four days after a boat carrying nine people crashed into a jetty along the Connecticut shoreline.
State environmental conservation police officers located the first body in the mouth of the Connecticut River between Old Saybrook and Old Lyme shortly after noon, about a quarter-mile (four-tenths of a kilometer) from the site of the accident, Police Capt. Keith Williams said.
The second man's body was found around 4:30 p.m., the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection said in an emailed statement.
Both men's names are being withheld pending family notification, officials said.
The crash killed another man, Christopher Hallahan, 34, of Westbrook. Connecticut, and injured six other people who were taken to a hospital.
Authorities responded to the accident shortly after 9 p.m. on Monday and found the 31-foot (9-meter) motorboat half submerged and significantly damaged near an Old Saybrook marina where the river flows into Long Island Sound. Police said the boat struck a jetty at the mouth of the river. The cause of the crash is being investigated.
The passengers were returning from a day trip to Block Island, Rhode Island, and it appeared none of them were wearing a life jacket, police said.
The dayslong search has involved divers, drones, aircraft, sonar and remote-operated underwater vehicles with cameras, Williams said.
The accident happened near where another boat crashed on Labor Day 2023, sending four people to a hospital. Environmental conservation police pushed back at the suggestion that the spot is particularly hazardous.
A capsized boat with a damaged hull is lifted out of the water by Eric's Towing at Saybrook Point in Old Saybrook, Conn. on Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024. (Arnold Gold/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP)
Police on the scene at Harbor One Marina in Old Saybrook, Conn., on Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024 following a boat accident on Monday night. (Arnold Gold/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP)
A Sea Tow boat is on the scene at Harbor One Marina in Old Saybrook, Conn., on Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024 following a boat accident on Monday night. (Arnold Gold/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP)
A capsized boat with a damaged hull is lifted out of the water by a Sea Tow Salvage Response Unit and Eric's Towing at Saybrook Point in Old Saybrook, Conn. on Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024. (Arnold Gold/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP)
ROME (AP) — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is meeting Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni in Rome on Monday, as the two very different politicians, from left and right, seek common cause to curb migrants reaching their shores by boat. The visit comes after at least eight seaborne migrants died off the French coast over the weekend.
Support for Ukraine is also on the agenda for the trip, part of Starmer’s effort to reset relations with European neighbors after Britain’s acrimonious 2020 departure from the European Union.
The center-left Labour Party prime minister isn't a natural ally of Meloni, who heads the far-right Brothers of Italy party. But migration has climbed the U.K. political agenda, and Starmer hopes Italy's tough approach can help him stop people fleeing war and poverty trying to cross the English Channel in flimsy, overcrowded boats.
More than 22,000 migrants have made the perilous crossing from France so far this year, a slight increase from the same period in 2023.
Several dozen people have perished in their attempts, including the eight killed when a boat carrying some 60 people ran aground on rocks late Saturday. The same day, 14 boats carrying 801 migrants reached Britain.
Starmer promised “a new era of international enforcement to dismantle these networks, protect our shores and bring order to the asylum system.”
“No more gimmicks,” he said before his trip to Rome — a reference to the previous Conservative government’s scuttled plan to send some asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda.
Meloni pledged a crackdown on migration after taking office in 2022, aiming to deter would-be refugees from paying smugglers to make the dangerous Mediterranean crossing to Italy. Her nationalist conservative government has signed deals with individual African countries to block departures, imposed limits on the work of humanitarian rescue ships, cracked down on traffickers and taken measures to deter people from setting off.
Italy also has signed a deal with Albania under which some adult male migrants rescued at sea while trying to reach Italy would be taken instead to Albania while their asylum claims are processed.
The number of migrants arriving in Italy by boat in the first half of this year was down 60% from 2023, according to the country’s Interior Ministry.
Starmer wants to learn from Italy’s mix of tough enforcement and international cooperation, though Italy's approach has been criticized by refugee groups and others alarmed by Europe’s increasingly strict asylum rules, growing xenophobia and hostile treatment of migrants.
The leader of Italy's right-wing League, Matteo Salvin i, who is deputy prime minister in Meloni's government, has been accused by prosecutors of alleged kidnapping for his decision to prevent a rescue ship carrying more than 100 migrants from landing in Italy when he was interior minister in 2019.
British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper defended the government's decision to seek advice from Italy's right-wing administration, saying “we’ve always had a history of working with governments that have different political parties that are not aligned.”
She said the U.K. was interested in Italy's experience in fighting organized crime, as well as its deals with countries such as Tunisia to stop migrants' journeys before they reach the sea, and its deal with Albania.
“I don’t think it’s immoral to go after the criminal gangs," Cooper told the BBC. "Quite the opposite. I think it’s actually a moral imperative to make sure that we are pursuing the criminal gangs who are putting lives at risk.”
Starmer toured Italy’s National Coordination Center for Immigration in Rome with newly appointed U.K. Border Security Commander Martin Hewitt. The government says Hewitt, a former head of Britain’s National Police Chiefs’ Council, will work with law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the U.K. and across Europe to tackle people-smuggling networks.
Soon after being elected in July, Starmer scrapped the Conservatives’ contentious plan to send asylum-seekers who cross the Channel to Rwanda, about 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) away, with no chance of returning to the U.K. even if their refugee claims were successful.
The Conservatives said the deportation plan would act as a deterrent, but refugee and human rights groups called it unethical, judges ruled it illegal and Starmer dismissed it as an expensive gimmick. He has, though, expressed an interest in striking agreements like the one Italy has with Albania that would see asylum-seekers sent temporarily to another country.
The Rome trip follows visits to Paris, Berlin and Dublin during Starmer’s first weeks in office — all part of efforts to restore ties with EU neighbors that have been frayed by Brexit. Starmer has ruled out rejoining the now 27-nation bloc but is eager for a closer relationship on security and other issues.
Ukraine will also feature in his talks with the Italian government, which holds the presidency of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations this year.
Unlike some politicians on the European right, Meloni is a staunch supporter of Ukraine. Starmer meets her after returning from Washington, where he and U.S. President Joe Biden discussed Ukraine’s plea to use Western-supplied missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pressing allies to allow his forces to use Western weapons to target air bases and launch sites inside Russia as Moscow steps up assaults on Ukraine’s electricity grid and utilities before winter. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that would mean NATO countries “are at war with Russia.”
So far, the U.S. hasn't announced a change to its policy of allowing Kyiv to use American-provided weapons only in a limited area inside Russia’s border with Ukraine.
Follow AP’s coverage of migration issues at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer, right, meets with the new U.K. Border Security Commander Martin Hewitt, ahead of his visit to Rome, at an airfield near London, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. (Phil Noble/Pool Photo via AP)
FILE - A boat thought to be with migrants is escorted by a vessel from the French Gendarmerie Nationale off the Wimereux beach, France, Sept. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Nicholas Garriga, File)
Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni walks before her meeting with the Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, at Palazzo Chigi, in Rome, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (Roberto Monaldo/LaPresse via AP)
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, from a Border Force vessel following a small boat incident in the Channel, Wednesday Sept. 4, 2024. (Gareth Fuller/PA via AP)
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer looks at screens showing the maritime traffic off the Italian coast during his visit to Italy’s national immigration crime coordination center, in Rome, Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (Phil Noble/Pool Photo via AP)
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, right, visits Italy’s national immigration crime coordination center, on the occasion of his visit to Rome, Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (Phil Noble/Pool Photo via AP)
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks at a breakfast meeting with Italian business leaders at Villa Wolkonsky in Rome, Italy, Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (Phil Noble/Pool Photo via AP)
