Thread by @JEMilneSky

Returning to the Old Bailey today for the continuation of the trial in relation to the deaths of 39 people whose bodies were found in a lorry last October.

Yesterday the court heard the 999 call made by Maurice Robinson in the moments after he discovered the bodies in the back and were shown footage of the moment he opened the back doors of the truck, vapour escaping as he opened the doors.

Prosecution calls Julian Skeith as an expert witness - Detective Constable for Kent Police working with Essex Police. Predominantly focusing on cell site data.

Julian Skeith confirms mobile phone companies keep records of the duration of phone calls for 12 months. Phone companies keep a record of the duration of the call and the numbers that make those calls. Police are able to apply for that data and the cell sites used.

JS now explains how a mobile makes contact with a cell tower and how this create cell site data. JS confirms it is thereby possible to locate an approximate area where a phone is being used but only within the coverage area of a cell but a location cannot be pinpointed.

JS confirms if you want to be more precise it is possible to carry out a survey which would enable a more specific reading of the data.

JS is now explaining how the phones of the deceased were able to connect to the networks in Belgium whilst they were inside the trailer, specifically around Zeebrugge.

JS now discusses the possibility of the defendants phones being located at Orsett golf Club at the relevant times.

The Defence begin questioning JS (after a short break). JS confirms that it is always the case that a mobile phone cane be located anywhere the cell provides coverage. In terms of JS survey, this does not represent the full coverage of each cell - JS agrees.

The coverage for each cell site could be as big as 7km, JS agrees. Text is accurate for locating. A phone call you have the start cell and the end cell.

The phone could be anywhere, where the cell site gives coverage - says JS.

Returning to the timeline of events and the evidence of Catherine Taylor, police analyst. The temperature is now falling in the back of the trailer, after Robinson has opened the back doors of the trailer. At 0147 Robinson ran Hughes, lasting a very short time.

At 0149 Robinson is at the rear of the lorry opening the doors and a police car, with its lights flashing, pulls in and stops. Followed closely by a second unit - jury being shown the CCTV of this.

From the body worn camera of another officer arriving at the scene - officer gets out of car and walks into shot of the CCTV camera, approaching the back of the lorry. The bodies in the trailer have been pixelated.

One of the officers was already standing in the back of the trailer. The officer whose footage we are watching walks towards the front of the lorry and speaks to a colleague. Whilst this is going on Hughes makes a call to Harrison that was directed to voicemail.

10 minutes later Hughes makes a call to Robinson again but by this time Robinson is in the company of the police and that call went to voicemail. Meanwhile at the golf club a white Mercedes can be seen to set off an ANPR camera on the Brentwood road coming away from the golf club

At 0221, the sprinter leaves the golf club, caught on the CCTV of the golf club at 0130.

Statement of Jack Emerson the police constable is read out to court: Responding to a phone call from ambulance stating they had 25 people not breathing. At 0150 hours we arrived at the location and i could see a heavy good vehicle with its lights on and trailer attached.

((pardon any mistakes, the connection from court means I am hearing EVERY OTHER WORD))

PC Cohen and PC Wyn arrived on the scene after us. At the back of the trailer i could see a 6ft white male standing at the rear of the trailer that I took as the driver. He was just standing there, his demeanour appeared calm.

I could visibly see half naked bodies laying on the trailer floor laying motionless. It became apparent as I got closer that the entire trailer were full of bodies. Most of the bodies were half naked.

Most of the bodies were wearing clothes on their lower half but not on their lower half. All of the bodies appeared in tact and it was my opinion they had not been there for a long time...

There was a strange smell that came from the trailer that smelt like chemical and there was smoke coming from the rear of the trailer that made me think it was a refrigerated container... I pulled out fold out stairs that were at the back of the trailer and PC Wake(..)

boarded the trailer to check for any signs of life. I boarded the trailer and saw the bodies extended all the way to the other end of the trailer... the majority of them were lying on their back. I immediately began scanning for any signs of movement or life.

I scanned all the bodies in my vicinity looking for any chest wounds... it was my opinion that all the people in the trailer were deceased. As I moved through the trailer i checked the bodies for pulse but couldn't find one.

Because of how packed together the bodies were it was not possible to check every body. I recall when checking some bodies some of them appeared to have been frothing from the mouth...

Four paramedics then boarded the trailer and confirmed what we had found... triaging the bodies and attaching dead tags to the bodies.

Hughes again tries to ring Robinson and it went to voicemail. Three minutes later he tries to call Harrison and it goes to voicemail.

At 0349 Kennedy was crossing the Channel back from France to England, he is cell citing at Calais at 0541 he is at Folkestone.

At 0638 the white panel van is in Folkestone and at 0700 he had got to Dover Eastern docks. He arrived at Coquelle in 0910 (French time).

At 0822 on the 23rd Oct Hughes tries to call Harrison who was roaming in the Netherlands and there was a call that connected for 1 min and 23 seconds. At 0845 that morning Hughes was due to fly from Dublin to Southend but he didn't show up for the flight.

Court breaks for lunch

Continuing with Catherine Taylor, on the morning of 23rd Oct Hughes calls Harrison again for 3 and a half minutes and 20 mins later the same again for 1 min 16 seconds.

9 hours since the 999 call and there is a WhatsApp message sent from Gormley to Kennedy showing part of a photo of Robinson's lorry and the trailer. 50 minutes later there is an exchange of text messages between an unknown number and Kennedy.

Someone asked "whose is the BG yolk got in Essex with the bodies?" 24 secs later Kennedy replies "Ronan Hughes" "Fuck" says the other person and Kennedy says "some mess". Kennedy is asked what happened, he says "must have been too meanie and run out of air".

Kennedy has taken a screenshot from the Daily Mirror with a picture of Maurice Robinson on it with a headline "First picture of man arrested after 39 people found dead in lorry".

Mr Nica, at Luton airport, at 1930 that night there is a black Range Rover coming to a stop at the airport and Nica and whoever was driving are seen to get out the Range Rover.

Nica is seen entering the terminal and at 2013 CCTV shows him waiting to board a plane from Luton to Romania.

That flight was booked that same day at 1253. He was travelling on a Romanian identification card, not a passport.

1505 on the 24th Oct Hughes calls Harrison for a 3 second call. A minute later Harrison calls back for 1 minute and 51 seconds. 20 minutes later another call Harrison to Hughes, this time for just under 5 minutes.

Prosecution calls Kevin Ford, Investigating officer with Essex Police, as a witness. Once the police had recovered the tractor unit driven by Maurice Robinson and the trailer to which it was attached, the truck and trailer were taken to secure premises. They were photographed.

The jury are now looking at these photographs. These are photos of the exterior and interior of the trailer. Looking at a picture of the rear of the trailer, the door opening mechanism by two handles towards the bottom.

To open the trailer you have to open the right hand door first. To open then, the three sides of the square of each mechanism is the part you have to pull towards you. There is a silver plate under a metal wire seal that needs to be decompressed.

Turning specifically to the seal. Bill Emlyn Jones turns the witnesses attention to the two trailer doors at the back of the court which are a mock-up of the back of the trailer, not the actual doors. After the explanation the witness will demonstrate how to open the doors.

"It should be impossible" to open the door without breaking the seal.

The wire in the seal of the door has been cut and bent down allowing the seal to be opened and closed time again "so anyone inspecting the vehicle will see that it is sealed". The seal exists for security of what's in the vehicle.

On opening or trying to open with a seal on, if you opened the locking mechanism it would be obvious, says Kevin Ford.

Prosecution calls Laura Martin as a witness. Mrs Martin is a consulting forensic engineering specialising in respiratory illnesses and hazardous substances.

Mrs Martin was asked to consider the atmosphere inside the trailer, she is at court in capacity as an expert witness.

Mrs Martin considered the rate at which those 39 people would have depleted the oxygen in the atmosphere and the rate at which the carbon dioxide would increase over time. She explains the basics, what the air around us is made up of.

Our bodies convert a small portion of our breath in into carbon dioxide when we breathe out, says Mrs Martin.

Ideal amount is anywhere between 19 and 22% of oxygen in the air. It is possible to survive with up to 10% oxygen in the year for the vast majority of normal individuals.

Its likely the increased concentration of carbon dioxide would be an issue, says Mrs Martin. We would start to see problems in significant health effects at around 5% reaching a toxic threshold, life threatening, at 10%.

These are not exact there is a range that would vary around individuals. At 5% carbon dioxide in the atmosphere we would expect most individuals would experience head aches, nausea, sleepiness...

The health and safety executive have set limits for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the workplace is 0.5% over an 8 hour working shift, that is the limit. But 15 minutes only, the limit would be 1.5%.

The purpose of those limits are designed to protect individuals from harmful effects of being exposed. If these were exceeded in the work place it would be considered a breach of regulations.

In practical terms the employers would be expected to reduce the levels immediately to a safe space. These are trying to prevent ill health amongst those being exposed.

39 people in the trailer, 31 male, 38 female. The average volume of carbon dioxide are slightly different for men and women. At the time of Mrs Martin's calculations she was aware one of the victims was sub 18 year olds. There were 3 under 18.

As a result of the post-mortem, none of the 39 suffered respiratory diseases and none of them were obvious smokers. In each breath a male will breathe out half a litre of air (500ml) per breath and for a female 400ml. 4.5% of which is carbon dioxide.

That means for each male each time they breathe out they breathe out 22.5ml of carbon dioxide. 12-20 breaths per minute, is the average respiration rate for adults. Using these calculations that means 21.6ltrs of carbon dioxide is breathed out per hour per man.

67 ltrs of carbon dioxide per hour by the men in that trailer. 139.2ltrs of carbon dioxide were breathed out by the women in that trailer. 808.8ltrs of carbon dioxide per hour we breathed out into that trailer by all 39.

Now turning to the dimensions of the trailer, the total volume inside is 86.9mtrs cubed. 0.8mtr cubed of carbon dioxide is being expired by the occupants of the trailer.

3 cubic metres is about the space that was taken up by the 39 people, which takes the space inside the trailer down to 83.9 cubic metres. Mrs Martin then considered whether all of the air available in the trailer was available to the occupants.

Carbon dioxide is more dense that the other elements in the air, it's heavier and so it would lead to a greater concentration of carbon dioxide being at the lower level of the trailer.

Which means there will be a greater concentration of carbon dioxide lower down, not at the ceiling. The 39 will be breathing from head height downwards. Mrs Martin explains the different layers of the atmosphere in the trailer.

10% carbon dioxide in the air is when it becomes life threatening. To get to 10%, the toxicity threshold, you're looking at 6 1/4 and 8 and 1/3 hours. 5% sooner than that - that's a mathematical theoretical calculation.

Using the trailer in question for a practical experiment, Mrs Martin had the trailer in the same sealed state, matched it's temperature to correspond with the data recovered.

And inject into it carbon dioxide at the same rate that she calculated the 39 people would have been expiring carbon dioxide inside the trailer. 13.7ltrs per minute of carbon dioxide was pumped into the trailer, that was near enough to what the 39 would be expiring.

The gauge for the device measuring the carbon dioxide was placed at nose level of Mrs Martin when she was sat on the floor, a third of the way up in the trailer. Using that rate of carbon dioxide injection into the trailer and taking the readings from the monitor -

it was 5 and half hours before carbon dioxide reached 5% in the atmosphere and 9 and a half hours before it reached 10%.

The discrepancies between the theoretical and the practical could be as a result of some leakage of the practical experiment, around the door seals.

Ultimately Mrs Martin came to the conclusion that the best estimate to reach 10% is between 8 and a half to 9 hours.

In the timeline of events between 2200 and 2230 the toxic threshold was reached, this has been added there because Mrs Martin added her best estimate to what she was told to what was the last known stop of the truck and trailer before it got to the ship.

There was a stop at 1330 and that's where Mrs Martin added the 8 and half / 9 hours. Plainly its when the doors last shut.

The last piece of phone activity was 2057 inside the trailer. Bill Emlyn Jones says someone was still alive at 2057. The temperature in the trailer did not start to full until some time after that.

Mrs Martin says she would expect some time from the point at which respiration stops for the temperature to fall, especially having been in the same situation for some time.

A person was seen to board that trailer at 1035/1039 - so take that to 2057 - that's 10 hours. Mrs Martin would consider that to be within the range of time it would have taken for all 39 to be killed.

With fewer people on board the trailer, Mrs Martin calculated that it would have taken between 18.2 and 24 hours to get to 10% for 15 people. And for 20 people it would have taken 14.2 to 18.5 hours to reach 10% threshold for toxicity in the atmosphere.

The 5% threshold would have been reached 9 to 12 hours for 15 people and 7 to 9 hours for 20 people. Defence begin to question Mrs Martin.

Dr Vince is called as an expert witness. Together with Laura Martin they broadly agree on the results of the calculations though he disagrees with the methodology.

With 20 people consider that it is likely there would have been some mild health effects which would have been reversible.

Again - this witnesses' testimony is inaudible from the court where I am reporting.

Severe distress to almost everyone in the area, substantial fraction of expose population requiring medical attention... that is at 6.7% carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for 30 minutes, confirms Dr Vince.

At a lower concentration than that there is a risk of some harmful effects. One can suffer the harmful effects from carbon dioxide, confirms Dr Vince, but if someone lets you out and you can breathe fresh air you will make a full recovery.

But you are at risk until someone opens the doors. You're at risk of ill effects. From a health and safety point of view "it is potentially very dangerous" to lock someone in a trailer, confirms Dr Vince.

Dr Vince agrees that shutting people inside a sealed box is not a safe thing to do.

"I would advise against it" says Dr Vince when Bill Emlyn Jones asks what his expert opinion would be on taking 15-20 people on a trip across Europe in a sealed container.

And so concludes court for the day. As a side note to today's proceedings, today has been the worst in terms of being able to hear the proceedings from the adjoining court that is being used for the press overspill - it's not good enough @HMCTSgovuk @kirkkorner