Revealed: Message ‘officer sent’ from Sarah crime scene
Hideous ‘joke’ ‘shared with 7 colleagues’
THE sickening message allegedly sent by a rookie policeman joking about Sarah Everard’s murder emerged yesterday.
The probationary officer, aged around 22, is said to have sent the ‘meme’ – a shared joke image – to seven colleagues as he manned a cordon in woods near ashford, Kent, where Miss Everard’s body was found.
It shows a policeman going through six stages from abduction to murder in a pastiche of the Highway Code.
In one image it shows the officer directing traffic holding a hand up to say ‘Stop single girl’. He then gives various
He gives various sickening signals
signals for different sickening actions, culminating in the murder and disposal of a body.
Yesterday there were calls for the officer who allegedly sent the appalling Whatsapp message to be sacked.
Miss Everard’s family are already reeling from the arrest of Metropolitan Police firearms officer Wayne Couzens, 48, on suspicion of kidnap and murder.
The meme was sent last Thursday, a day after Miss Everard’s body was found. The 33-year-old had disappeared from a street in Clapham, south London, as she walked home on March 3.
Horrified police colleagues immediately reported the message to senior officers, who referred the matter to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).
The watchdog has launched three probes following an unprecedented seven referrals for alleged blunders regarding the case so far. The rookie officer was placed on restricted duties.
Last June, two Met officers were arrested for allegedly sharing selfies on Whatsapp of the bodies of murdered sisters Bibaa Henry, 46, and Nicole Smallman, 27, while they were guarding the crime scene in Wembley.
Yesterday the sisters’ mother, former Chelmsford archdeacon Wilhelmina Smallman, said: ‘When you’ve lost your children you think nothing else could possibly happen and then you discover another layer of betrayal and trauma.’
Harriet Wistrich, director of the Centre for Women’s Justice, said: ‘We are never going to tackle violence against women if we have got police officers demonstrating this level of misogyny. It is sick.’
Met assistant commissioner Nick Ephgrave said he takes ‘very seriously’ allegations any officer has failed to meet standards.
The Met were accused of heavyhanded tactics while arresting women at a vigil to Miss Everard on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the mother of murdered Scot Moira Jones has written an open letter following the death of Sarah Everard.
Miss Jones was abducted yards from home in Glasgow in 2008, then raped and beaten to death in Queen’s Park, where a vigil was held for Miss Everard on Saturday. Slovakian Marek Harcar was jailed in 2009 for Miss Jones’s murder.
Posting the open letter on social media yesterday, Mrs Jones, from Weston, Staffordshire, wrote: ‘First and last, my concern is for Sarah’s loved ones.
‘They are totally devastated and bewildered and vulnerable.
‘It may be that in those first days the family were comforted to think so many were grieving with them. How can they cope at all?’