BBC distress call leads to rescue of six women trapped in refrigerated lorry in France – ‘Please help, it’s urgent’

Six women were rescued from the back of a truck in France after the BBC helped locate them and alerted the police.

The four Vietnamesee.g – one of which is a minor both Iraqisbelieved to be immigrants, they were trapped inside, panickede.g and they were struggling to breathe. One of them spoke to the BBC from inside the truck.

The BBC then contacted the police, who stopped the lorry.

French police arrested his driver and also opened an investigation into a possible operation human trafficking.

The History

“Around noon on Wednesday, my phone screen lit up,” journalist Khue B. Luu writes in her article. “It was a message that read: “There are some who crossed the border from France to England in a refrigerated lorry” and the reporter continues:

“Before I could read the message, a call came. “Are you in Europe? Please help, it’s urgent”came a panicked voice.

I felt chills all over. The tragic story of 39 Vietnamese immigrants who were found dead after suffocating in a lorry in 2019 in Essex was still fresh in my mind.

I didn’t know who was on the other end of the phone, but I thought he knew me from when I covered the deaths in Essex, as many Vietnamese approached me at that time.

I asked a few questions, but quickly became frustrated that I couldn’t get the information I needed.

What I learned was that there was a group of about six people in the truck, its registration number was unknown, as was its location and the direction it was going.

All I knew at this point, from what the voice on the other end told me, was that the vehicle was in France but appeared to have turned around and was no longer heading towards its original destination – the English border.

I was told it was six women in cold conditions from the air conditioning and panicking.

But they were still able to communicate with the outside world and the caller put one of them in touch with me.

“It’s so cold” a young woman texted me from the truck carrying bananas. He said the truck was sealed with an iron rod.

He also sent me two short videos that they showed the scene inside.

A video showed a dark section and cardboard boxes containing fruit stacked to the ceiling, leaving only a few tens of centimeters of space for them to sit on the floor. A cough was heard and a young female voice said in fluent English: “I cant breathe”.

My wife said they got into the truck around 12:30 the night before. Since they had spent more than 10 hours there and started to they worry when the location data on their phone showed the truck had changed direction.

Locating the truck

Without much time to think, I contacted colleagues from BBC News and journalists living in France. At the same time, a reporter from the French newspaper Le Monde in London was also informed, who immediately notified his colleague in the Paris editorial office who specialized in immigration.

The woman was able to share with me tits locationfrom which I saw that the truck was on the E15 motorway, near Dracé, north of Lyon.

I then asked a colleague in France to contact the nearest police station to the truck, and we were able to get in touch with them and send them the information we had.

The woman was unable to make calls from inside the truck. It’s not clear to me why not, but it might have been due to the type of Sim card it was using.

We gathered all the information we needed and constantly sent updates on the location of the vehicle to Pham Cao Phong, a freelance journalist in Paris, as well as the BBC News Europe team and the French police.

Suddenly, location sharing stopped – I had lost the truck.

But the young woman could still text me. He told me the air conditioner was off – and he was having trouble breathing.

“We are so suffocating,” he wrote.

Caught in the tight space I saw in the short video clip, I feared they wouldn’t have much time to last.

I tried to reassure them, telling them to keep calm, not to talk to save air, and that the police would come very quickly.

I nervously looked at the computer screen and then my phone, waiting for news.

Police intervention

After talking with her for a while, I found out that before they got into the truck, three men who were with her woman decided not to follow her. I’m not sure why they made that decision, but they took a photo of the truck’s license plate number.

The photo showed it had Irish plates and on my phone I was able to see its location again.

The French police in the area told us they had locate the location of the vehicle and had it stop.

I texted her but I don’t think she read my messages – the police must have arrived and confiscated her phone.

The four Vietnamese said they boarded the truck with the promise that they would be taken safely to England.

As for me, I was relieved to know they were now safe in France. They’re safe, I told myself, that’s the most important thing.”