Police used an app developed more than 10 years to help track the location of six men travelling illegally in the back of a refrigerated lorry as it headed into Cambridgeshire from France. Cambridgeshire Police control room utilised GoodSAM to find the lorry after one of the men dialled 999 to say they couldn’t breathe.
GoodSAM (Good Smartphone Activated Medics) is an app which alerts people to suspected cardiac arrests occurring close to them, so that they have the opportunity to assist before emergency services arrive
The company that developed it has now rolled it out globally and it is used by ambulance, police, fire, government, charity, and health services to improve emergency management, largely through video enabling Instant-On-Scene video assessment and from the platform’s ability to alert trusted responders to provide immediate help.
A police post to their Facebook pages said the 999 call came in on Wednesday morning “when we received a dropped 999 call from a person in the trailer of a refrigerated artic lorry travelling on the M11 into our county.
“The caller stated they couldn’t breathe, before the call dropped out, however our control room managed to utilise GoodSAM to track the location of the moving lorry through Huntingdonshire before we caught up with it on the A142 between Ely and Soham.
“Six men were found in the trailer, having travelled from France earlier in the morning.”
Police said all six men were checked over by medics before being taken into custody “in relation to immigration offences which has since been passed to the UK Border Agency for investigation”.
