A people-smuggler discovered 39 migrants dead in the back of his lorry after receiving a message from his boss saying: “Give them air quickly, but don’t let them out”, a court heard today.
Driver Maurice Robinson, 26, opened the sealed unit to find the bodies of Vietnamese men, women and children aged between 15 and 44.
They were trapped in the container for almost 12 hours without fresh air as temperatures reached an “unbearable” 38.5C.There was no mobile phone reception inside the pitch-black container but some victims tried to send messages to loved ones.
One 28-year-old woman Pham Thi Ngoc Oanh wrote an unsent text reading:“Maybe going to die in the container, can’t breathe any more dear”.Prosecutors say people-smugglers charged
Read more on mirror.co.uk