Father of two was arrested af ter end of his shif t at Westminster
ARMED policeman Wayne Couzens had only just finished a shift protecting Westminster VIPs when he was arrested.
The married father-of-two is a member of the elite Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection squad – a role that entitles him to carry a firearm and a Metropolitan Police warrant card.
Yesterday relatives described their shock at his arrest, with one describing the 48-year-old officer as ‘a fine upstanding man’ and his mother-inlaw declaring: ‘He could not do anything like this.’
A neighbour at the £200,000 threebedroom house in Deal, Kent, that Mr Couzens shares with his ‘chatty’ wife and two young children said: ‘They just seemed like a normal, regular family. There was nothing strange about them at all.’
Mr Couzens’ armed police unit is responsible for the protection of government buildings and embassies, as well as ministers and visiting heads of state. His unit sometimes guards events attended by senior royals.
His wife is from a remote part of Ukraine and studied biology at one of the country’s leading universities, in Donetsk, before coming to the UK and working as a scientist. She worked at a Boots Opticians in Canterbury and is now the laboratory manager of a successful science firm in Kent.
Last night her mother Nina Sukhoreba, speaking from her home in Kirovograd, 300 miles south of the capital Kiev, said: ‘He could not do anything like this. He is a wonderful family man, a wonderful man. This just sounds crazy to me.’
Since marrying her daughter in 2006, she said Mr Couzens had been striving to learn Ukrainian and had visited the country every year.
She said in the past few days, the couple had been getting their children ready to return to school after the lockdown was lifted.
She said: ‘I talked to my daughter just yesterday and she didn’t tell me anything. She said Wayne was at work and everything was fine. He is a wonderful father. He came to visit with the children and we all walked to the river and he helped me at home and in the garden.’
Born in Dover in 1973, Mr Couzens did not join the police until later in life. He spent 20 years working at his family’s garage business, BCB Dover, established in 1967.
The business closed in 2015. By then both he and a brother had become policemen.
In between leaving the family firm and becoming a Met officer, Wayne Couzens did a spell in the territorial army and worked at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, where he had firearms training, as part of the team protecting Dungeness nuclear power station.
By 2008, he was a traffic officer with Kent Police in Folkestone.
It is not known which year he switched to the Met.
He lived in top floor flat of a converted period property in Folkestone for around three years. Neighbours Kelvin and Belinda Neary recalled him as ‘very quiet’, but added he had once rescued an elderly tenant from her flat when a fire broke out.
His landlady Shannette Roy, 74, said: ‘He had only just qualified as a policeman and was working in Dover. He was a nice fellow. The only thing I found strange was when he said he was going over to Ukraine to get his wife and he brought her back. She didn’t speak very good English.
Mrs Roy added: ‘He loved being a police officer. He was just normal, kept the place tidy and paid his rent on time.’
The Couzens family bought their house in 2015. It has a trampoline in the back garden, and their primary-aged son and daughter appear to have spent lockdown making amusing videos posted on YouTube about family life, including how they ‘pranked mum and dad’.
Mrs Couzens proudly posted photographs on her public Facebook page of the family’s holiday to Ukraine in 2017 and another in 2019 to Dubai.
An uncle of Mr Couzens, Kevin Fowle, of Chatham, Kent, told the Mail: ‘He’s never done anything untoward. He is a fine upstanding man.’
A cousin, Stefan Boyce, 29, said he was shocked to hear of his arrest, saying: ‘It’s quite frightening. I’ve heard so much about him being in the police force and how proud the family were.’
A former neighbour said it ‘was very rare’ for Mr Couzens to go out and drink with friends and that he just ‘seemed happy with his kids’.
‘He’s a fine upstanding man’