Migrant deaths truck driver: I’m devastated for grieving families
...but says he didn’t know people were in his cargo
AN Irish l orry dri ver accused over the deaths of 3 9 migrants has t ol d jurors he is ‘devastated’ for their families.
Eamonn Harrison, 23, was captured on CCTV as he dropped of f a container containing the human cargo at Zeebrugge i n Belgium on October 22 last year.
On arrival at Purfleet port in Essex early the next day, the container was picked up by fellow Irishman Maurice Robinson, who discovered the Vietnamese nationals, aged 15 to 44, had all died.
Mr Harrison, of Newry, Co. Down, has denied their manslaughters and being involved in two successful smuggling runs on October 11 and 18 last year. Yesterday at the Old Bailey court in London, Mr Harrison told jurors he had no idea the migrants were there.
Alisdair Williamson QC, defending, said: ‘We all know that you drove a tractor unit that pulled the trailer that contained 39 people on their way to their deaths.
How do you feel about that?’ Mr Harrison replied: ‘Sh**e.’ Asked how he felt for the families, he said: ‘Devastated.’
Mr Williamson said: ‘ Did you know that there was anyone on your trailer?’ The defendant replied: ‘No.’ He told jurors he had suffered from ADHD at school and found it hard to make friends.
At the age of 18, he followed in his father’s footsteps and got his HGV licence.
In May 2018, he was stopped by border force officials who found 18 Vietnamese migrants sitting on boxes of waffles in his trailer.
Asked if he had any idea they were there, Mr Harrison said: ‘No. I was shocked, you know?’
He told jurors he called his boss
Ronan Hughes, from Co. Armagh, who was also shocked.
Mr Harrison said he was sent on his way having been issued a civil penalty notice. In May 2019, Mr Harrison had a crash and wrote off a lorry tractor and trailer, ruining a load of Danish bacon.
He said: ‘I was not in a good place. I was drinking. I was actually drunk when I had the crash.’
Asked how Hughes reacted, he said: ‘At first he was concerned. Once he knew I was all right, he was not happy.’
Mr Harrison said he felt ‘stupid’ over the incident, which caused a lot of damage. The defendant said he went to Spain to stay with his parents and ignored Hughes’s attempts to contact him.
He said: ‘I owed him money. I just caused him a lot of damage.’
Eventually, Mr Harrison went to see him and Hughes offered him work on a reduced wage to pay off the £16,000 he owed for the damaged lorry, he said.
Hughes also offered him ‘something else’ if he was willing to ‘load stolen goods’, the defendant said. Mr Williamson asked: ‘What is your reaction when Mr Hughes says to you, “I would like you to load some stolen goods”?’
Mr Harrison said: ‘I was not happy about it.’
The lawyer said: ‘Why did you agree to it?’
The defendant replied: ‘Because
I owed him money.’ He said he would ‘walk away from the tractor and come back 15 minutes later because I did not want to have anything to do with i t’. The defendant went on to describe how he met Romanian Petrisor Zgarcea, who is known as Alex, at West Thurrock services in Essex on October 7 last year.
They went together to the continent where Harrison made a series of stops on October 10, jurors heard. At Nieppe in north France, Mr Harrison told jurors, he was told to ‘go for a walk’, so he left his lorry for five to ten minutes. He said: ‘I’m not too happy about it, do you know? What can you do? I owe the man money.’ Later, he dropped off the trailer at Zeebrugge alone before picking Alex up at a petrol station and taking him to Calais, the court heard.
On October 17, Mr Harrison said, he met Robinson in Comines, northern France, to swap trailers.
Mr Harrison took a biscuit load while Robinson delivered some frozen vegetables to York so he could return to Ireland in time for his girlfriend’s birthday, jurors heard. Later, Mr Harrison stopped in Nieppe, having been told to meet Alex and go for another ‘walk’, before dropping the trailer in Zeebrugge. The next day, Mr Harrison rang Robinson for a ‘wee bit of craic’ then got drunk in Bruges. He told jurors he was ‘not too happy’ about having to deal with Alex again.
Mr Harrison and alleged organiser Gheorghe Nica, 43, of Basildon, Essex, deny 39 counts of manslaughter. Mr Harrison, lorry driver Christopher Kennedy, 24, of Co. Armagh, and Valentin Calota, 37, of Birmingham, have denied people smuggling, which Nica admits it. Jurors have heard that Robinson, 26, of Craigavon, Co. Armagh, and Hughes, 41, have admitted the manslaughters.
The trial continues.
‘I was drunk when I had the crash’ ‘Because I owed him money’