Essex lorry deaths: Four people-smugglers jailed for a total of 78 years
The Old Bailey Court in London on January 22 jailed four people-smugglers for a combined 78 years after 39 Vietnamese migrants smuggled to the UK were found dead in the back of a lorry.
Gheorghe Nica (left), Eamonn Harrison (second, right) at the Old Bailey Court. (Photo: AFP/VNA)
Ringleaders Gheorghe Nica, 43, and Ronan Hughes, 41, and drivers Maurice Robinson, 26, and Eamonn Harrison, 24, were give imprisonment sentences on the day.
Nica was given 27 years, Hughes got 20 years in prison, Harrison was sentenced to 18 years, and Robinson was jailed for 13 years and four months - all for 39 counts of manslaughter and a people-smuggling conspiracy.
On October 23, 2019, the bodies of 39 Vietnamese were discovered in the back of a refrigerated lorry at an industrial estate in Grays in Essex, near London.
Autopsies concluded that the provisional cause of the death of the victims was a combination of hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation and hyperthermia, or overheating in an enclosed space./.
VNA
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