BBC journalist Khue B Luu saved six migrant women trapped in a refrigerated truck in France after receiving a distress call from an unknown number.
In her account of the story for the BBC, Luu received a text message from an unknown number on Wednesday that read, "There are some people who crossed the border from France to England in a refrigerated van." Then she received a call: "Are you in Europe? Please help, it's urgent."
Luu believes she was contacted directly because of his coverage of the tragic fate of 39 Vietnamese migrants who were found dead in the back of a truck in Essex in the UK in 2019 after having travelled through Belgium.
"This is what I learnt," the journalist wrote, "there was a group of about six people hiding in the lorry, its licence plate number was unknown, as was its location and the direction it was heading in."The only additional information she was able to gather was that the truck was in France but had veered off of its original end goal – the border with the UK – and that the people were freezing in the refrigerated trailer.
Luu was then able to speak directly with the people trapped in the truck, sitting among stacked boxes of fruit. They told him that they had been in the truck for ten hours, and had begun to worry when they saw that they had changed directions while tracking their locations on their phones, which they sent to Luu along with two videos of the inside of the truck.
Luu immediately contacted his colleagues living in France, who alerted the closest police station to the truck, which was traveling on a highway north of Lyon.
It's still unclear why the trapped migrants were unable to contact the police themselves, but Luu suggests it might have been a problem with their Sim card. Then, they lost connection. Though Luu was still able to text the woman she was in contact with, she could no longer see their location. The woman texted her: "We're so suffocated."
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"I tried to reassure them, telling them to keep calm, to try not to talk to save air, and that the police would come very quickly," Luu wrote. After what must have seemed like an unending wait, Luu was told that the French Police had successfully intercepted the truck and saved the five woman and one young girl: four, including the minor, are Vietnamese, and two Iraqis.
The BBC reports that later that day, French prosecutor Laetitia Francart in Villefranche-sur-Saône announced that the driver of the vehicle, which came was from Lithuania, was under investigation. On Wednesday, a French public prosecutor announced that four of the six women would have to leave the country within 30 days.
"As for me, I felt relief knowing that they were now safe in France. They are safe, I told myself, that's the most important thing," Luu concluded his harrowing experience.
