Essex lorry deaths: Trafficking ringleader jailed for 15 years after 39 died from suffocation and hyperthermia
A man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after being convicted in a Belgian court of being the ringleader in the trafficking of 39 migrants whose bodies were found inside a lorry in the UK. Vo Van Hong was found guilty of leading a cross-Channel people-trafficking operation that has been linked to the deaths of dozens of people inside the truck that was found on an industrial estate in Grays, Essex, in October 2019. The Vietnamese 45-year-old was among 18 people who were convicted of being involved in the deaths of 31 men and eight women aged between 15 and 44.
Other people involved in the case were jailed for between one and 10 years. Five people were found not guilty.
Image: Police and forensics at the crime scene in Grays, Essex, in October 2019
The victims died from suffocation and hyperthermia in the confined space of the truck, which arrived on a ferry from Zeebrugge, Belgium.
Temperatures in the unit had reached an “unbearable” 38.5C (101F) as the migrants were sealed inside for at least 12 hours, the court heard. They had each paid about GBP13,000 to be smuggled into the UK and had desperately tried to raise the alarm as they suffocated inside the pitch-black refrigerated unit, which had been switched off.
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Following a 10-week trial in 2020, Northern Irish lorry driver Eamonn Harrison was found guilty of 39 counts of manslaughter, while Romanian organiser Gheorghe Nica was convicted of the same charges.
Image: Lorry driver Maurice Robinson is seen leaving Purfleet port in Essex after collecting the trailer containing the migrants
Image: Gheorghe Nica pleaded not guilty to the manslaughter of the migrants
Lorry driver Maurice Robinson and haulage boss Ronan Hughes had previously admitted the manslaughter of the migrants. The court heard Robinson – who discovered the bodies after collecting the trailer when it arrived in Purfleet, Essex – had received a message from Hughes which read: “Give them air quickly, don’t let them out.”
Most of the migrants are believed to have boarded the lorry container in northern France before it was driven to Zeebrugge and loaded on to a cargo ship bound for Purfleet on 22 October 2019.