Police identify dredger in collision that left one man dead and two Brighton men missing

Sussex Police said that investigators had identified the vessel believed to have collided with a smaller boat on Sunday, leaving one man dead and two men from Brighton missing feared dead.

The force said this afternoon (Thursday 10 August): “Police and marine accident investigators have named the boat believed to have collided with a smaller one off Shoreham in the early hours of Sunday morning (6 August).

“The vessel is the scallop dredging boat, Vertrouwen, which left Shoreham around the time of the incident, bound for Grimsby.

“Police are now in touch with the owner, MacDuff Shellfish Ltd, who are co-operating fully with the investigation.

“A small boat had left Shoreham Harbour around midnight with four pleasure fisherman on board.

“It is now known that the collision occurred around 12.30am and the boat was lost without raising a distress call.

“One man was rescued by commercial fisherman after clinging to a buoy for more than five hours and another man’s body was recovered by a coastguard helicopter on Sunday morning.

“Two other men who were on board the boat are still missing.

“The man who died has been formally named by police as 50-year-old Traiam Dumitrache, a Romanian national from London.”

Traiam Dumitrache

All four men in the smaller boat were Romanian. One of them, Elvis Cojocariu, also from London, survived despite having been in the cold sea for about four hours.

He was rescued from the sea, having clung to a buoy as he tried to swim to shore.

Two men from Brighton, Mitch Ilie, a father of four, and his brother-in-law Irinez Popovici, a father of three, are still missing presumed dead.