I didn’t know I was in charge of Couzens case, says porn star PC
STEPHEN GLOVER IS AWAY
A FORMER police officer accused of failing to catch Wayne Couzens before he killed Sarah Everard says she did not know she was meant to be investigating him until after his arrest for murder.
Couzens was identified on a crime report as a ‘suspect who needed to be arrested’ hours before the killing after he was reported for flashing two women at a McDonald’s restaurant three days earlier.
PC Samantha Lee was told to go to a McDonald’s drive-thru in Swanley, Kent, on March 3, 2021, after Couzens was captured on CCTV flashing two women on February 14 and 27.
But the 29-year-old claimed yesterday that she did not know she was in charge of the case and went off on leave after the visit, assuming someone else would check it out further ‘in a few days’.
Later on the night of March 3, Scotland Yard officer Couzens abducted, raped and murdered 33year-old marketing executive Ms Everard. Lee, who has left the force and set up an OnlyFans site under the name Officer Naughty, denied missing opportunities to catch the killer.
She told a police disciplinary hearing that she had been ‘shocked’ after Ms Everard’s murder to learn she had responsibility for investigating Couzens’ earlier offences. She denied being lazy after being accused of carrying out ‘a lamentably poor and rushed investigation’, failing to acquire CCTV and spending just 15 minutes at the restaurant.
Lee said she had ‘assumed’ another team of officers had taken up the ‘low priority’ case, until she got a call informing her of Couzens’ arrest for murder on March 10. Lee denies gross misconduct.