{"id":16905,"date":"2020-04-09T05:40:52","date_gmt":"2020-04-09T09:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=16905"},"modified":"2020-04-09T05:40:52","modified_gmt":"2020-04-09T09:40:52","slug":"essex-lorry-deaths-driver-maurice-robinson-admits-manslaughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2020\/04\/09\/essex-lorry-deaths-driver-maurice-robinson-admits-manslaughter\/","title":{"rendered":"Essex lorry deaths: Driver Maurice Robinson admits manslaughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lorry driver Maurice Robinson has pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to 39 counts of manslaughter after the deaths of a group of Vietnamese migrants.<\/p>\n

The 31 males and eight females were discovered in a refrigerated trailer on 23 October in Grays, Essex.<\/p>\n

Robinson, 25, of Craigavon, County Armagh, previously admitted conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.<\/p>\n

At the same Old Bailey hearing, co-defendant Gheorghe Nica, 43, denied 39 counts of manslaughter.<\/p>\n

Both men appeared via video-link at the hearing, which was conducted virtually with most lawyers and court reporters attending by Skype.<\/p>\n

The bodies of the Vietnamese nationals were discovered at an industrial estate soon after the lorry arrived in the UK on a ferry from Zeebrugge in Belgium.<\/p>\n

Among the men, women and children were 10 teenagers, two of them 15-year-old boys.<\/p>\n

\"Bodies<\/a>
Aerial footage shows police activity around the lorry where the bodies were were discovered in the early hours of 23 October<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In March, it was revealed they all died from asphyxia and hypothermia.<\/p>\n

Another three men charged with other offences in connection with the deaths also appeared at the Old Bailey via video-link.<\/p>\n

Romanian national Alexandru-Ovidiu Hanga, 27, of Hobart Road in Tilbury, Essex, denied a charge of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.<\/p>\n

Christopher Kennedy, 23, of Corkley Road in Darkley, County Armagh, has previously denied conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.<\/p>\n

Valentin Calota, 37, of Cossington Road in Birmingham, was not asked to enter a plea to the charge of conspiring to assist unlawful immigration.<\/p>\n

Mr Nica, a British Romanian citizen of Mimosa Close in Langdon Hills, Essex, also denied one count of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration between 1 May 2018 and 24 October 2019.<\/p>\n

Robinson also admitted one charge of transferring criminal property, but denied a charge of transferring criminal property.<\/p>\n

Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones QC asked for three weeks to decide whether to proceed with a trial against Robinson on that charge.<\/p>\n

The other defendants face a trial at the Old Bailey lasting up to eight weeks. It is scheduled to begin on 5 October.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lorry driver Maurice Robinson has pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to 39 counts of manslaughter after the deaths of a group of Vietnamese migrants. The 31 males and eight females were discovered in a […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,4],"tags":[6775,6699,6617,6708,6692,6700,1240],"class_list":{"0":"post-16905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-uk","10":"tag-county-armagh","11":"tag-craigavon","12":"tag-essex","13":"tag-essex-lorry-deaths","14":"tag-grays","15":"tag-maurice-robinson","16":"tag-old-bailey","17":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16906,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16905\/revisions\/16906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}