A lorry driver near Calais died on Sunday evening after an altercation with three migrants who attempted to get on his truck on the motorway in an attempt to reach the UK.
The incident took place along the A16 motorway in Beuvrequen near Calais and saw the lorry driver, a Portuguese national, attempt to remove three migrants who had climbed on his vehicle. The confrontation came to blows after the stowaways were ordered to leave.
Investigators spoke to the co-driver of the lorry, another Portuguese national, who said that the migrant had physically assaulted his colleague and punched him, and the driver had then suffered a heart attack around five minutes later and died, France Bleu reports.
It is believed that the lorry driver had been suffering from prior health problems and was already being treated for a heart condition.
Investigators are still looking into the details of the incident, however, and say the driver had reported the presence of the migrants in his trailer to the police.
The case is not the first time migrants have been linked to the death of a driver in the Calais area. In 2017, migrants laid tree trunks on the A16 in order to slow traffic and break into vehicles in order to sneak into the UK.
The trees left in the road caused a traffic collision which saw the driver of a van, a Polish national, killed. Nine Eritrean nationals were later arrested in connection with the incident.
Over several years, there have been many other violent incidents between drivers and migrants in the area as well, such as when a migrant in 2017 struck a lorry driver in the head with a brick, while others hijacked the man’s vehicle. The incident also took place on the A16.
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