British police find 39 bodies in truck

GRAYS, England — Authorities found 39 people dead in a truck Wednesday in an industrial park in England and arrested the driver in one of Britain’s worst humansmuggling tragedies.

Police were reconstructing the final journey of the victims as they tried to piece together where they were from and how they ended up in England.

“To put 39 people into a locked metal container shows a contempt for human life that is evil,” said Jackie DoylePrice, a member of Parliament who represents the area where the truck was found. “The best thing we can do in memory of those victims is to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice.”

The truck and the trailer with the people inside apparently took separate circuitous journeys before ending up on the grounds of Waterglade Industrial Park in Grays, 25 miles east of London on the Thames River.

British police said they believe the container went from the port of Zeebrugge in Belgium to Purfleet, England, where it arrived early Wednesday. Police believe the tractor traveled from Northern Ireland to Dublin, where it took a ferry to Holyhead in Wales before picking up the trailer at the dockside in England.

The truck’s driver — a 25-year-old man from Northern Ireland — was arrested and faces allegations of murder. He has not been charged and his name has not been released.

The truck was registered in Bulgaria to a company owned by an Irish citizen, Bulgaria’s Foreign Ministry said. Its point of origin was unclear. The Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said it has opened an investigation.

“We have no idea at the moment how long the lorry [truck] spent in Belgium,” said spokesman Eric Van Duyse. “It could be hours or days. We just don’t know.”

A police motorcycle escort slowly led the Scania semitrailer out of the park as darkness approached Wednesday, taking it to a place where the bodies could be recovered. The driver of the trailer wore a full forensic suit and gloves as he guided the vehicle in the impromptu cortege past journalists.

Britain remains an attractive destination for migrants, even as the U.K. is negotiating its divorce from the European Union.

In Parliament, Prime Minister Boris Johnson put aside the Brexit crisis and vowed that human traffickers would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

“All such traders in human beings should be hunted down and brought to justice,” he said.

Ambulance workers discovered the bodies after being called at 1:40 a.m. It was unclear who called the ambulance service.