Mum faces jail for people smuggling
A MOTHER of four yesterday wept as she was convicted of trying to smuggle a van-load of 12 Vietnamese immigrants into Britain.
Katy Bethel, 28, was six months pregnant when she was stopped with boyfriend Aaron Harris, 28, as they tried to enter the Channel Tunnel.
Harris was driving a van stacked with tyres which concealed a number of men, women and children.
Bethel claimed she had no idea what the ‘cargo’ was in the back of the van, and said they had planned to stock up on alcohol ahead of the birth of her fourth child, but they ‘kept getting lost’ during the day trip to Calais.
The couple were stopped at about 9pm on July 4, 2015, as they headed home from Calais via Folkestone with five women, four men and three children under the age of 12 hiding in the back of their Mercedes Sprinter van
UK Border Force officials in Coquelles, France, spotted a pair of legs poking out of the tyres a few feet from where Bethal was sitting in the van.
Yesterday Bethel, from Gillingham, in Kent, sobbed as she was convicted at Maidstone Crown Court and told she faced jail.
Judge Philip Statman warned her she was likely to go to prison for ‘some considerable time’.
Harris, also from Gillingham, admitted the same charge at an earlier hearing.
Both will be sentenced on September 11.
‘Kept getting lost’