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On October 23, 2019, 39 men, women and children, aged 15 to 44, were found dead in the container after it was transported from Zeebrugge in Belgium to Purfleet in Essex.
The Old Bailey court in London has heard them suffocate in temperatures of up to 38.5 ° C in the dark interior.
The CCTV jurors of the truck driver Maurice Robinson (26) were shown picking up the trailer and driving out of the Port of Purfleet.
He had received a Snapchat message allegedly from Transportation Chief Ronan Hughes saying “Give them a quick air, don’t let them out.”
Robinson responded with a “thumbs-up emoji,” the court was told.
At 1.13 am, Robinson opened the nearby trailer on Eastern Avenue, Thurrock, and steam was seen rising through the doors.
In CCTV footage reproduced in court, Robinson appeared to run past the cab of the truck before re-entering and driving away.
Robinson spoke with Hughes and suspected key organizer Gheorghe Nica by phone and drove on a circuit before returning to Eastern Avenue, jurors heard.
About 23 minutes after finding the bodies, Robinson finally dialed 999 at 1.36 a.m.
During the call to the ambulance service played in court, Robinson said: “I am a truck driver and I just lifted a trailer from the port.”
When asked if the patients were breathing, he said: “No. There are, uh, lots, there are immigrants in the back, but they are, they are all lying on the ground.
“I went and picked up a trailer from Purfleet, the cargo terminal, and I got to where I was going to park for the night and I heard a noise from the back and I opened the door and there were a lot of them lying down.”
When asked how many, Robinson said: “The trailer is stuck. I do not know.”
He estimated that there were about 25 people in the trailer and confirmed that none were breathing.
Earlier today, jurors heard the trailer being loaded onto a ship named Clementine in the port of Zeebrugge at 3pm on October 22 last year.
The ship departed at 3.36pm with the container on the weather deck, which was open to the elements with an outside temperature of 14 ° C.
At 6.25pm, a young Vietnamese woman took a series of selfies on her phone that showed the sweltering conditions inside.
For the next two hours, the occupants tried to make phone calls, and one called the emergency number of the Vietnamese police, without success.
In a recorded message to his family, Nguyen Tho Tuan (25) said: “I’m sorry. I can’t take care of you. Sorry. Sorry. I can’t breathe.
“I want to go back to my family. Have a good life. “
In another telephone recording at 20:02, Nguyen Dinh Luong (20) said: “I can’t breathe. Sorry, I have to go now.”
In the background a voice could be heard saying: “Let’s all go. Open, open. “
In another phone recording two minutes later, the same victim said: “I’m sorry. Everything is my fault.”
A voice in the background then says, “He’s dead.”
Cargo operator Jason Rook said in a statement that he smelled a “rotting smell” while unloading the trailer.
He said the Clementine arrived at Purfleet around 11:50 p.m. and had unloaded three or four containers before reaching the one in question.
He said: “As I passed the doors and got to the left side of the trailer, I suddenly noticed a strong smell that I can only describe as a rotting smell.”
Jurors have heard that Robinson and Hughes (41) have previously admitted to the homicide of the migrants.
Truck driver Eamonn Harrison (23) from Co Down, who had left the trailer in Zeebrugge, has denied 39 counts of manslaughter along with Nica (43) from Basildon.
Harrison, Co Armagh truck driver Christopher Kennedy (24), and Birmingham’s Valentin Calota (37) have denied being part of a larger human trafficking conspiracy, which Nica has admitted.
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