UK police officer kills woman after false Covid arrest

Demonstrators hold placards as they await the sentencing of British police officer Wayne Couzens for the murder of Sarah Everard, outside the Old Bailey court in London on Wednesday. — AFP photo

A serving British police officer kidnapped a woman as she walked home, handcuffing her in a false arrest for breaking coronavirus restrictions, before raping and murdering her, a court was told on Wednesday.

The disappearance of Sarah Everard during a national lockdown in March was one of Britain’s most high-profile missing person investigations and sparked protests and a debate about women’s safety on the streets.

Wayne Couzens, 48, who served with the elite diplomatic protection unit of  London’s Metropolitan Police, admitted her kidnapping, rape and murder in July.

Everard, who had been visiting a friend in Clapham, south London, was strangled then set on fire, with her remains found in woodland a week after she was snatched.

At a two-day sentencing hearing, prosecutor Tom Little said Couzens targeted the 33-year-old marketing executive on March 3, and accused her of breaking coronavirus rules.

Couzens, who was off-duty but wearing his police belt, kidnapped Everard in a ‘false arrest’, by ‘handcuffing her and showing his warrant card’, he added.

Security camera footage showed him holding up his warrant card and then handcuffing Everard before putting her into a car he had hired ‘to kidnap and rape a lone woman’, he said.

A couple driving past in a car also witnessed this, and assumed an undercover police officer was making an arrest, the lawyer added.

But he said Couzens exploited his knowledge and experience of police patrols enforcing lockdown restrictions and knew what language to use.

A former boyfriend had given evidence that Everard was ‘savvy and streetwise’ and would not have got into a car with a stranger except ‘by force or manipulation’, he added.

‘The fact she had been to a friend’s house for dinner at the height of the early 2021 lockdown made her more vulnerable to and more likely to submit to an accusation that she had acted in breach of the Covid regulations in some way,’ the lawyer told the court.

Couzens sat in the dock at London’s Old Bailey with his head bowed, watched by members of Everard’s family, as the judge considered whether to hand him a whole-life jail term.

AFP