Petrified alice was palmed off by police when she told them ex was stalking her
A MURDER victim was “palmed off” by police when she reported her ex-boyfriend for stalking – five days before he killed her, a court heard yesterday.
The jury were told Alice Riggles called 101 after Scots soldier Lance Corporal Trimaan “Harry” Dhillon breached an order banning him from harassing her.
According to her flatmate Maxine McGill, a police operator asked Alice: “What do you want to do about it?”
Maxine told the court Alice thought that making the call had been a “complete waste of time”.
The witness added: “When she called police, she asked to speak to the same officer as before but I think it was the operator she spoke to.
“She said she had been palmed off and the person she spoke to asked her, ‘What do you want to do about it? She said, ‘I don’t know, that is why I was calling you’.
“Basically, she told me it was just a waste of time.”
The prosecution allege that Dhillon went to Alice’s flat, slashed her throat and left her to die in a pool of blood.
Dhillon, 26, who was based at Glencorse barracks, Penicuik, Midlothian, denies murder.
Newcastle Crown Court heard that the 2 Scots signaller was “controlling and obsessive”.
When Alice ended their six-month relationship last July, he refused to accept it and started to harass her, it was claimed.
Alice reported him to police and an order was slapped on the soldier to keep away from her.
Maxine, from Glasgow, said Dhillon returned to the flat she and Alice shared in Gateshead four days after police issued the harassment warning.
He knocked on the door and on Alice’s bedroom window, before leaving flowers and chocolates.
Maxine said: “She became petrified of him.
“He had shown up at the flat when I was staying at my boyfriend’s house.
“I woke to a message from her at six o’clock in the morning, saying Harry had been to the flat. “I went to the flat and heard the footsteps of Alice walking to the front door. But the person who answered was not the person I knew – she was pale, white, visibly shaking. “She did not look like she had much sleep.” Maxine told the court that the relationship with Dhillon had “ruined” Alice, turning her from a happy, “vibrant” personality to an anxious introvert who had lost weight and was “afraid to go out”.
She broke down in court as she told how she had found Alice dead in their flat in October.
Maxine added: “She was lying in the bathroom with her head in the doorway to the kitchen.
“I just ran to her. There was blood everywhere There had been a struggle. Her legs both looked broken.”
Maxine told police of her suspicions about Dhillon and he was arrested at Glencorse later that night.
He claims Alice slashed her own throat and he ran from the scene because he had been traumatised after a comrade died with a slashed throat in a helicopter crash while he served in Afghanistan.
Prosecutor Richard Wright QC said checks had revealed Dhillon did not visit the crash scene until two days after the accident and there was a tarpaulin covering the wreckage.
The trial continues.