Migrants who died in 101F ship container ‘had paid traffickers £400k’

THIRTY- NINE migrants who together paid £400,000 to reach Britain in a shipping container suffocated in ‘unbearable’ 101F heat, a court heard yesterday.

The Vietnamese stowaways – including three children – died on a ferry from Belgium because people smugglers had packed so many inside, it was said.

Running desperately low on air and unable to escape from the sealed unit, they attempted to use their mobile phones to alert others to their plight.

Pham Thi Ngoc Oanh, 28, tried to send a message saying: ‘Maybe going to die in the container, can’t breathe any more dear.’

But her message, like all the others, was never sent because there was no mobile phone signal. Almost 12 hours after they scrambled inside, the trailer was collected by lorry driver Maurice Robinson from Purfleet docks in Essex, shortly after midnight last October 23.

The smuggler had been sent a message from his boss with orders about what to do once he had the container. It said: ‘Give them air quickly, but don’t let them out.’

Robinson, 26, drove to a nearby street and opened the doors at the back and discovered that the 28 men, eight women and three children were all dead.

Bill Emlyn Jones, prosecuting, said: ‘What he found must haunt him still. For the 39 men and women inside, that lorry had become their tomb.

‘What it must have been like inside that lorry does not bear thinking about. In short, they suffocated.’

When their bodies were discovered it had been almost 12 hours since ‘ any meaningful amount of fresh air had been let into the sealed container’.

Mr Emlyn Jones said temperatures inside reached 101F (38.5C). The court also heard that traffickers charge ‘upwards of £10,000 per person’ to cross the Channel in the back of a lorry.

The harrowing details of the

‘I can’t breathe any more’

final hours of the 39 were outlined to the Old Bailey yesterday on the opening day of the trial of four men accused of being in a trafficking gang.

Eamonn Harrison, 23, of County Down, Northern Ireland, and Gheorghe Nica, 43, of Basildon, Essex, deny 39 counts of manslaughter. Nica has admitted conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.

Harrison, Valentin Calota, 37, of Birmingham, and Christopher Kennedy, 24, of County Armagh, Northern Ireland, deny conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.

Robinson, the driver who found the bodies, and haulage chief Ronan Hughes, 41, both pleaded guilty to manslaughter and the immigration charge at earlier hearings.

The trial continues.