39 bodies found in a trailer in Essex, United Kingdom.

The tractor-trailer in question. Yahoo News.

39 bodies have been found in a trailer in Essex and the driver has been arrested. Yahoo News. The bodies of 38 adults and one child were found in the trailer and were all pronounced dead. The driver was a 25 year old man and was from Northern Ireland. The trailer took a convoluted path to reach the UK as it was originally from Bulgaria and traveled to Ireland before crossing the Irish Sea for delivery in Essex. Police suspect that path was chosen to avoid security checks for human smuggling in places like Calais and Dover. The incident is likely related to human smuggling operations, though the country of origin for the dead is currently unknown. 

My Comment:

Fairly horrible story out of the UK this morning, but one that seems to be rather common these days. Finding a trailer full of dead bodies isn't that uncommon here in the United States. As illegal immigration and human trafficking increase these kinds of incidents will become more common. 

One wonders how they died though. In most cases in the US at least it is usually due to extreme heat. Un-refrigerated trailers can get extremely hot but due to the climate in the UK I doubt that is what happened. My guess is that the journey just took to long and the people inside ran out of water or oxygen. 

I don't have a problem with charging the driver with murder, assuming he knew what his cargo was. I guess there is a small chance that he had no idea that he was pulling human cargo but that seems extremely unlikely. He seems to have been very bad at his job as you would assume that part of it would have been keeping the people alive for delivery. 

This was a very well organized operation even if the delivery was a total failure. My guess is that some serious organized crime was going on here and it may not have even been the first time that they tried this. They could have done it many times without a hitch but for whatever reason it didn't work out this time. 

My guess is that the UK will likely crack down on it's border checks on trucks and trailers (or "lorries" in their parlance). The article mentioned dogs and heartbeat sensors and I am guessing that those checks will become more common at other ports now. Of course in this case these people may have been dead long before they entered the UK so those efforts may not have worked regardless, but it would help with other attempts to do this where the people were still alive. 

Regardless, as long as people want to come to other countries illegally, there will be incidents like this. And there will always be scummy evil people that don't care about who gets hurt during human smuggling as long as the money is there. Migrant deaths are just a fact of life these days and are pretty unavoidable.