[Ammi]

Essex lorry deaths: Driver told to give migrants 'air quickly' but not to let them out, trial hears...


A lorry driver was told to give migrants “air quickly” but not to let them out during a 12-hour journey where they suffocated to death, a court has heard.

Lorry driver Maurice Robinson, received a message from his boss to give the Vietnamese nationals, sealed inside the pitch-black refrigerated unit “air quickly, but don't let them out", jurors were told.

With no signal in the container that had risen to a temperature of 38.5C, one of the victims - a 28-year-old woman - wrote a text message that was never sent, saying: "Maybe going to die in the container, can't breathe any more dear."

Lorry driver Eamonn Harrison and Gheorghe Nica are on trial at the Old Bailey accused of the manslaughter of the 39 migrants who were found dead after the lorry arrived in Purfleet, Essex, in October last year.

The pair are also accused of being part of a people-smuggling conspiracy with another lorry driver, Christopher Kennedy, and Valentin Calota.

Opening their Old Bailey trial, Bill Emlyn Jones said the people-smuggling team had operated successful runs before the one in October last year that went "dreadfully wrong".

He told jurors: "Obviously, any time you fill an airtight container with a large number of people, where they will be left for hours and hours, with no means of escape and no means of communication with the outside world - well, it is fraught with danger."

Jurors were told the cost of being smuggled across the English Channel in the back of a lorry was some £10,000 per person.


...full article...

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/essex-lorr...180237367.html