Human cargo driven to frozen fate
Irish smuggling ring suspected after 39 migrants are found dead in container picked up by lorry at Essex port
POLICE are investigating a suspected Irish people-smuggling ring after 39 migrants were found frozen to death in the back of a refrigerated lorry.
One of UK’S biggest murder inquiries was opened yesterday after the bodies, including that of a teenager, were discovered in the vehicle on an industrial estate in Essex.
The container arrived at Purfleet, close to Tilbury Docks, from Zeebrugge, Belgium, at 12.30am yesterday. It left at 1.05am on the back of the lorry, which had entered the UK via Holyhead from Dublin four days earlier.
Just 35 minutes later the police were told the lorry was on an industrial estate in nearby Grays and that bodies had been found inside. The driver of the cab, named locally as Mo Robinson, 25, of Co Armagh in Northern Ireland, was arrested on suspicion of murder.
It is believed Mr Robinson may have alerted the authorities himself, as sources close to the investigation told The Daily Telegraph it was “very unlikely” he knew of the plans to smuggle people across the border.
Temperatures in the refrigerated truck can get as low as -25C (-13F) and sources said that the people inside had died from suspected hypothermia.
Boris Johnson said the perpetrators of the crime “should be hunted down” and Jackie Doyle-price, the MP for Thurrock, said putting “39 people into a locked metal container shows a contempt for human life that is evil” and the best way to honour their memory was to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, described it as a “truly shocking incident” and signalled she was willing to consider tougher sentences for human traffickers. “What we have seen through the actions of these traffickers is the worst of humanity,” she told MPS at the House of Commons.
Police were last night investigating links to Bulgaria as it emerged the truck’s cab was registered there in 2017. The country’s foreign ministry said it was registered in the port city of Varna, on the Black Sea, under the name of a company owned by an Irish woman, but that the cab had not returned in two years. The area is a known cigarette and fuel smuggling route with links to Irish republican gangs.
The container has been linked to a firm with an office address in Dublin but is registered in Northern Ireland.
Pippa Mills, deputy chief constable of Essex Police, said that “in order to ensure we maintain the dignity of the people who sadly lost their lives” they had moved the lorry, with the bodies still inside, to Tilbury Docks, as they started the “long process” of identification.
“We are yet to identify them and must manage this sensitively,” she added. The nationality of the migrants and where they began their journey remained unclear.
The news came after repeated warnings about Britain’s porous borders and a crackdown on Calais to Dover migration routes. The National Crime Agency warned last year that Belgium was a new frontier for illegal immigration. And Richard Burnett, the Road Haulage Association head, said yesterday
‘What we have seen through these traffickers is the worst of humanity’
that smugglers were considering other routes because of tighter security at Dover and Calais. “You’ve got heartbeat monitors, dogs, CO2. Those checks are done as you drive through,” he said.
Zeebrugge’s harbourmaster said they saw migrants trying to stow away “every day” at the Belgian port.
‘My God, I feel for those people inside, dying like that, and their families at home. It’s so awful’
SHORTLY after 1.10am, CCTV cameras at an industrial estate in Essex captured a lorry travelling past not long after its container unit had been brought ashore at nearby Purfleet Docks.
Some 30 minutes later, a call was made to Essex Ambulance Service alerting them to a grim discovery.
When paramedics opened the lorry’s doors at Waterglade Industrial Park, Grays, they found the bodies of 38 adults and one teenager, thought to be migrants.
The details of the fateful journey made by the Scania lorry in which their corpses were found emerged last night, as it was revealed it had been on British soil for just an hour and 10 minutes before its human cargo was discovered.
It is now thought the man who alerted the emergency services was the driver of the vehicle, named locally as
Mo Robinson, who appears to have called the ambulance service after he opened the lorry’s rear doors on arriving in Grays yesterday.
Mr Robinson is thought to have picked up the lorry’s container unit from Purfleet Docks just over an hour earlier and may not have known what it contained.
The 25-year-old, from Portadown, Co Armagh, who has been named by several media outlets, was later arrested in connection with the deaths of the migrants.
With his help, police have begun to piece together the sequence of events that brought the lorry to Britain and the means by which it travelled here.
The container unit, which had been leased from an Irish-registered company, GTR Trailer Rental Solutions, is now known to have arrived at Purfleet, close to Tilbury Docks, from Zeebrugge, in Belgium, at 12.30am yesterday. Here, it was picked up by Mr
Robinson’s lorry cab – known as the tractor unit – which appears to have made the journey from the province through the Republic of Ireland and across the Irish Sea to Holyhead, from where he drove to Purfleet.
Mr Robinson’s Facebook page is decorated with photographs of his cab, resplendent in its distinctive red and white livery.
The Bulgarian foreign ministry in the capital Sofia said the container unit in which the 39 bodies were found was Bulgarian-owned, but registered to a company owned by an Irish woman.
Boyko Borissov, the Bulgarian prime minister, said: “The truck had been registered in 2017 in Bulgaria by an Irish woman. It then left the country and never re-entered.
“So there is no way that we can be connected, except from the registration plates of the truck.”
The container in which the migrants were found has been linked to a company that lists its offices in Dublin but when the address was visited by The
Daily Telegraph yesterday, a receptionist said that it was just a PO Box.
Sources suggest that the container was actually registered to a company across the border in Northern Ireland run by a woman and her son.
Sources close to the investigation say it was “very unlikely” that Mr Robinson was aware of a plan to smuggle people across borders.
There was no response at his family home in the village of Laurelvale last night.
Neighbours said Mr Robinson did not live with his parents. “We hardly ever see him. It’s his parents’ house but he does visit now and again, like at Christmas,” one said.
Having picked up the trailer unit, Mr Robinson left Purfleet Docks at 1.05am and made his way to nearby Grays, where industrial estates, distribution centres and lorry yards line the Thames
Estuary. At 1.13am, a CCTV camera outside the Big Blue Squirrel Self Storage unit captured the lorry braking as it moved along Motherwell Way, as if the driver was looking for somewhere to pull in.
Sana Mirza, the firm’s store manager, told The Telegraph: “As it goes past our camera, the brake lights go on, as if he’s seen a turn-off into a yard.
“But perhaps he’s gone past the lorry yard next to us, knowing he can’t make the turn or it was full, and turned at the next left.”
In a statement, Essex Police said: “After further inquiries, we now believe that the trailer travelled from Zeebrugge into Purfleet, and docked in the Thurrock area shortly after 12.30am this morning. The tractor unit of the lorry is believed to have originated in Northern Ireland. We believe the lorry and trailer left the port shortly after 1.05am.”
The first emergency services on the scene were the ambulances. A spokesman for the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust said: “We responded to a call to Eastern Avenue in Grays in the early hours of this morning and sent five ambulances, hazardous area response teams and a car from the Essex and Herts Air Ambulance. Unfortunately, 39 people had died prior to our arrival.” The entrance to the industrial estate – a 10-minute drive from the centre of Grays and equally close to the Thames Estuary – was quickly sealed off by police.
Officers erected thick green sheeting across the gates to the estate, on Eastern Avenue, to prevent passers-by from observing the work of forensics officers throughout the morning.
A tent was also erected in front of the rear doors of the lorry to allow officers to gather and collate material removed from where the corpses were found.
Mr Robinson’s cab – visible through the green sheeting – was decorated with stickers, including one across the top of the windscreen reading “Ireland”, with two Celtic harps on either side, and one at the bottom saying “The Ultimate Dream.”
Poignantly, in the light of the events that followed, a “dream catcher” or sacred hoop lucky talisman, hung in the window of the cab. Around 5pm yesterday, police moved the lorry from the industrial estate to Tilbury Docks for the next part of the investigation.
Deputy Chief Constable Pippa Mills, of Essex Police, said the container unit was being moved so the bodies could be recovered and the process of identification begin away from the glare of publicity.
Speaking at the scene, she said: “To maintain the dignity of the people who sadly lost their lives, we’ll be moving the vehicle to Tilbury Docks to begin the recovery and identification of the bodies.”
Watching a replay of the CCTV images captured by her camera, Ms Mirza said her heart went out to the families of the dead.
“My God, I feel for those people inside, dying like that, and their families at home. It’s so awful,” she said.
“And for the ambulance people to have to go into that lorry and see that sight. Terrible, absolutely terrible.”