HIS HEAD GASHED, POLICEMAN IN COURT
A POLICE firearms officer appeared in court yesterday charged with the kidnap and murder of Sarah Everard.
Wayne Couzens, who is attached to Scotland Yard’s elite Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command, is accused of abducting Ms Everard as she walked home from a friend’s flat in South London, killing her and attempting to hide her body in woodland.
The father-of-two appeared to have a black eye and a red wound on the top of his forehead while in the dock at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
Before the hearing, Scotland Yard said he been taken to hospital for a second time in 48 hours on Friday. He was treated for a fresh head injury sustained in custody before being discharged. He was previously treated for a separate head wound on Thursday, also sustained when he was alone in his cell in Wandsworth Prison.
Couzens was brought to the court in a blue police van at 10am and stepped into the dock wearing a grey tracksuit about half an hour later. The 48-year-old stood behind a glass panel, flanked by a pair of plain-clothes officers in black facemasks.
He struggled to be heard as he spoke only to confirm his name, address and date of birth.
The court heard that the remains of Ms Everard, a marketing manager, were found at 4.45pm on Wednesday in a builder’s bag in Ashford, Kent – 80km from where she was last seen. She was later identified from dental records.
Couzens, who was arrested at his home in Deal, Kent, is accused of kidnapping Ms Everard, 33, in the Poynders Road area of Clapham on March 3. He was offduty at the time of her disappearance, but had been guarding the US Embassy in Battersea earlier that day.
At the end of the 20-minute hearing, he was remanded in custody to appear at the Old Bailey on Tuesday.
The court heard that Ms Everard, who lived in Brixton, left her friend’s house at around 9pm to make the 4km journey home. She called her boyfriend for 14 minutes from 9.13pm but there was no subsequent activity on her phone, which has not been found.
Ms Everard was captured on CCTV at 9.15pm, again at 9.28pm and later caught on the camera of a police car at 9.32pm.
Couzensjoined the Met Police in September 2018.