The 39 migrants, locked inside a bitterly cold and airless shipping container, never stood a chance – their cries for help fading away with no one to hear them.
The stowaways – 38 adults and one teenager – slowly died in ‘absolutely horrendous’ conditions after they tried to reach the UK on a cargo ferry from Belgium.
Experts yesterday said the temperature inside the refrigerated trailer unit might have been as low as -25C (-13F).
The migrants were huddled inside for at least 15 hours by the time the door was opened on an industrial estate in Essex at 1.40am yesterday.
In reality, they could have been inside their metal coffin for much longer.
Although paramedics reached the scene minutes after being called out, all they found was a pile of bodies.
he 39 desperate stowaway migrants were locked up in the cabin (above) and it is not yet clear how long they had been stored there for
Mo Robinson is the truck driver arrested after 39 people were found dead in the back of a lorry he was driving
Forensic officers (pictured above) were pictured doing a full sweep of the vehicle after the discovery was made in Essex
Essex police began a murder inquiry yesterday as they attempted to establish who the migrants were and which country they had travelled from.
Like thousands of others before them, the group are thought to have sneaked inside the container at the busy Belgian shipping port of Zeebrugge, where row after row of rectangular metal containers are lined up ready to be transported to the UK.
Police are trying to establish when the group got inside and if smugglers found the container for them and then locked the door behind them.
Robinson arrived in the UK at the weekend. He picked up the trailer, which had been shipped from Zeebrugge to Purfleet, yesterday evening. Minutes later, he pulled into the Essex industrial estate and the alarm was raised
The container was placed on a cargo ship on Tuesday, which then set sail around 2pm. The choppy Channel crossing took around ten hours before the ship docked at the Essex port of Purfleet on the Thames at 12.30am yesterday.
Richard Burnett, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, said those inside would have frozen to death in horrendous conditions if the refrigeration had been switched on.
‘It’s going to be dark and if the fridge is running it’s going to be incredibly cold,’ he said.
‘The only place to go to the toilet is inside the container. You can imagine if they’ve been in there for days it would be pretty grim.’
On Tuesday night trucker Maurice ‘Mo’ Robinson, 25, was waiting inside his purple lorry cab at Purfleet docks for the container to be unloaded from the ship.
The self-employed haulier, who lives in the Northern Irish village of Laurelvale in County Armagh, drove out of the port 35 minutes later with it attached to his lorry.
He drove his Scania truck one mile to an industrial estate in Grays, Essex, where he arrived at 1.10am yesterday.
CCTV footage has emerged of the lorry driving towards the Waterglade Industrial Park minutes before the shocking discovery inside the container.
An ambulance control room then received a 999 call informing them of the bodies in the container. Last night police would not reveal if this call was made by Mr Robinson. The East of England Ambulance Service were the first to arrive. Five ambulances, hazardous area response teams and a car from the Essex and Herts Air Ambulance were all dispatched. Essex Police were then called. Minutes later, they arrested Mr Robinson on suspicion of murder.
He remained in police custody last night. Officers are trying to establish if he knew whether the migrants were inside.
The container was removed from the scene yesterday afternoon, with the 39 victims still inside. As it was driven away to a secure location with a police escort, other officers bowed their heads. Last night Mr Robinson’s shaken brother said the family had not heard from him and ‘don’t know what is going on’.
Mr Robinson, who is pictured on social media with a Loyalist flag, is understood to have left the £300,000 home he shares with his pregnant girlfriend – who is said to be expecting twins – on Saturday morning.
He is thought to have driven his lorry cab to Dublin where he drove on to a ferry bound for Holyhead in Wales. Police yesterday confirmed that his lorry arrived on the mainland on Saturday.
It is not known what Mr Robinson did on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday before picking up the container at Purfleet in the early hours of yesterday but at some point he drove the 300 miles to Essex before collecting the container.
His lorry cab is adorned with Celtic harps and the world ‘Ireland’ on the windscreen. Beneath it the phrase ‘the ultimate dream’ has been attached, with a dream catcher hanging inside the cab.
He regularly writes messages on Facebook and Instagram about his truck, referring to it as ‘the Scandinavian Express’ and ‘the Polar Express’.
He is thought to rent it, rather than own it. The lorry carries Bulgarian number plates and is a left-hand drive.
Bulgarian public broadcaster BNR said the lorry was registered in that country on June 19, 2017, by an unnamed Irish woman. It left the Balkan country the next day and has not returned since, according to the Bulgarian authorities.
Last night DUP councillor Paul Berry said Robinson’s family have not been officially told that he has been arrested. ‘I’ve spoken to the family a couple of times,’ he said. ‘At this stage they haven’t been informed of anything – and the police don’t have to in these circumstances. Obviously they [the family] are very distraught. His mother is incredibly distraught as well as his partner.
‘They are just waiting for news. People keep ringing them up and asking “is it true?” but they just don’t know.
‘They contacted police themselves but a sergeant said he couldn’t tell them anything. It does seem unfair. The family at least should know that he has been arrested.’
The container in which the migrants died was rented by an Irish haulage firm called GTR on October 15 from its site in County Monaghan. It was rented for a week for £240.
The company said it was co-operating fully with the UK police. A spokesman said it was ‘gutted’ the trailer had been used in this way. There is no suggestion that GTR has any connection to the deaths of the migrants.
The industrial estate where the lorry was found today is close to the Dartford Crossing and is used as a stopping point for lorries travelling south to the Port of Dover and the Channel Tunnel.
Lithuanian lorry driver Tadas Cesnavicius, who works in the area, said: ‘You see a lot of lorries coming in and out the area, but whether they have people inside who knows? It is terrible to hear it happened right in the next road.’
Additional reporting by Jim Norton and George Olding.