Police have arrested two more people over the deaths of 39 people found in a truck, believed to be Chinese nationals, on suspicion of human trafficking and manslaughter.
A man and a woman, both aged 38, were arrested in Warrington, Essex police said. The driver of the truck, a 25-year-old man from Northern Ireland, remains in police custody having been arrested on suspicion of murder.
A statement from Essex Police said: “We have carried out warrants in Cheshire as part of the investigation into 39 bodies being discovered in a lorry trailer in Grays.
“As a result, a 38-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman from Warrington have been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to traffic people and on suspicion of 39 counts of manslaughter.
“A 25-year-old man, the driver of the lorry, remains in custody on suspicion of murder. A warrant of further detention was granted yesterday, Thursday 24 October, by local magistrates.”
The trailer arrived at Purfleet at around 12.30am on Wednesday, and the front section to which it was attached, known as the tractor, came from Northern Ireland via Holyhead in North Wales on Sunday.
The lorry and trailer left the port at Purfleet shortly after 1.05am, and officers were called to the Waterglade Industrial Park on Eastern Avenue in Grays at 1.40am.
On Thursday evening, the first 11 bodies were moved by a private ambulance with a police escort from the port of Tilbury to Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford. A day later a further three ambulances left the port under police escort. Post-mortem examinations will now be carried out.
Police have not confirmed whether the driver raised the alarm after finding the eight women and 31 men, while his supporters have set up petitions online calling for his release.
People living close to Purfleet – the port where the container entered the UK – said illegal migrants were a familiar sight.
“It’s a magnet for illegals,” said Janet Lilley, 61. “People would come strolling out of the docks, get in the vans and that’s it, they drive off.”
Lee Tubby, 45, who lives opposite the port, said he has seen people “climbing out the top and out the back” of lorries and cutting the plastic roof covering to climb through.
“We’ve had people just come out of the port knocking on the door asking for shoes, asking for water,” he said.
It is not yet known when the victims entered the sealed refrigerated trailer, where temperatures can be as low as -25C, or the exact route it travelled.
Mike Gradwell, a former Lancashire Police detective superintendent who worked on the probe into the Morecambe Bay cockling tragedy in which 23 Chinese illegal immigrants drowned, told BBC Breakfast that those inside could have been trafficked by a so-called Snakehead gang.
“These are criminal travel agents really – you go to a Snakehead to say you want to be trafficked to an economic opportunity and usually you’ll borrow quite a significant amount of money,” he said.