A community in shock - a Gazette comment

The description of a “sleepy hamlet” devastated by a terrible tragedy - coupled with residents’ remarks that “this is a quiet place, nothing like this ever happens here”- may seem almost hackneyed. But it could not be more true of anywhere than of Snowdown.

The cluster of about 50 homes is a place where people know their neighbours, where each summer sees villagers come together for a convivial barbecue, where residents usually feel safe strolling through the surrounding fields and woodland.

But the close community has been left reeling, this sense of safety shattered. In the days since Julia’s murder, Snowdown’s streets - usually quiet but for the occasional crow of a cockerel or bark of a dog - have been overrun with police and journalists. Reporters from major news outlets across the country have been knocking doorto-door, while at one point a news helicopter even circled overhead. Snowdown’s landscape itself has changed.

The area’s roads are dotted with the stark blue-and-lime green of police vehicles, its lush fields stippled with the tiny figures of police officers, standing guard at the perimeter of their massive crime scene.

The sight of long lines of black-clad search teams combing fields is now commonplace. Understandably, residents are feeling worried.

With no clear idea of why Julia was targeted, and her killer still on the loose, many people say they are scared to walk alone - something they’ve typically enjoyed doing more than ever this past year, during the pandemic. One Aylesham man said, “If this could happen to her, it feels like it could happen to anyone”.

And that feeling seems to be shared by many.

Yes, Julia was a PCSO; by all accounts her job meant a great deal to her and she was extremely good at it. But she was also a dearly loved mother, wife, grandmother, daughter, and sister; a well-respected pillar of the community and a popular neighbour.

She was a woman who had left her home on a bright spring afternoon with the most innocent of objectives; to walk her beloved dog in the fields she knew well. But she was killed in broad daylight in what could well have been an utterly random attack.

We can only hope that anyone with information will be quick to contact the police, and that seeing Julia’s killer brought to justice will bring her loved ones some of the answers they are bound to be searching for.