Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
PAL’S FUTILE SEARCH FOR TRAGIC MIGRANTS
Court told of taxi drop-offs near farm in northern France
When he got out of the taxi.. he was calm and did not hurry LAETITIA MOCKELYN OLD BAILEY YESTERDAY
GUILTY Robinson
A LONE man was left “looking for his friends” in northern France the day before 39 Vietnamese people were found dead in the back of a lorry, a court has heard.
Lorry driver Eamonn Harrison, 23, allegedly picked up the migrants in his trailer before dropping it off at the port of Zeebrugge in Belgium on October 22 last year.
The container was collected at Purfleet in Essex the next morning by Maurice Robinson, who found the bodies of the men, women and children, the Old Bailey was told.
Jurors heard the victims, aged between 15 and 44, had suffocated in the sealed trailer in sweltering temperatures of up to 38.5C.
Yesterday, on the anniversary of the deaths, the court was told the lorry was seen making a short stop in Bierne in northern France on the morning of October 22.
Laetitia Mockelyn said in a statement she was present when Estelle Duyke called Gendarmes about the presence of migrants around her mother-in-law’s house. Ms Mockelyn had been there to help the 88-year-old woman in her capacity as carer.
She saw nine people being dropped off by taxi and running to a farm shed.
She said five minutes later a white refrigerated lorry stopped and the migrants got in. The court heard that 10 minutes later a man was dropped off by another taxi.
The witness said: “When he got out of the taxi he went immediately round the back of the building. He was very calm and did not hurry.”
When he was approached, he said in English he was “looking for his friends” before walking off in the direction of a Coca-cola factory.
Ms Mockelyn added: “Estelle called the Gendarmerie, who went to check the shed. There was no one there.”
Ms Mockelyn told French police she had never seen anything like it before.
Jurors heard that, during the morning of October 22, the temperature in the trailer had steadily risen from 11.7C to 15.6C by around 10.30am.
Co Monaghan haulage boss Ronan Hughes, 41, and Robinson, 26, from Co Armagh, have pleaded guilty to 39 counts of manslaughter.
Gheorghe Nica, 43, of Basildon, Essex, and Harrison deny the charges.
Harrison, from Co Down, lorry driver Christopher Kennedy, 24, of Co Armagh, and Valentin Calota, 37, of Birmingham, have denied being part of a wider people smuggling conspiracy, which Nica has admitted to.
Adjourning the trial for the weekend, Mr Justice Sweeney acknowledged the first anniversary of the deaths.