Murder victim was on telephone to police
A woman who was stabbed to death along with her mother was attacked while on the phone to police, it was disclosed last night. Raneem Oudeh, 22, and Khaloa Saleem, 49, were killed outside their home in Solihull, West Midlands, in the early hours of Monday. It has emerged that the mother of one had contacted police several times in the hours before her killing. Police were last night searching for Ms Oudeh’s former boyfriend.
A WOMAN who was stabbed to death along with her mother was attacked while on the phone to police, it was disclosed last night.
Raneem Oudeh, 22, and Khaloa Saleem, 49, were killed outside their home in Solihull, West Midlands, in the early hours of Monday.
It emerged last night that the mother-of-one had contacted police several times in the hours before her killing and was on the phone with officers when she was attacked.
Police are now hunting Janbaz Tarin, 21, an Afghan shopkeeper and Ms Oudeh’s former boyfriend, in connection with their deaths.
West Midlands Police has referred itself to the police watchdog over the murder, after it emerged that Ms Oudeh, who is Syrian and has a two-yearold child from another relationship, first rang police on Saturday morning while she was at work, saying that Mr Tarin had threatened her.
She also spoke to police several times on Sunday, the force confirmed yesterday.
A spokesman for West Midlands Police said: “There were a number of calls from Ms Oudeh to police on Sunday evening and we tried to physically locate her but were unsuccessful.
“Contact was being made to arrange to see Miss Oudeh and it was during this conversation that the situation escalated and the call handler immediately dispatched officers to the location in Northdown Road where they arrived within minutes.” It is not clear why police were unable to locate her immediately. However, it is understood officers had arranged for Ms Oudeh to be visited by one of the force’s so-called “diary cars”. Manned by neighbourhood police officers, these vehicles attend meetings that have been arranged with victims of crime, as part of an attempt to make it easier for members of the public to speak to police. The Daily Telegraph also understands that Ms Oudeh had contacted the police when she lived with Mr Tarin at a flat in the Kingshurst area of Birmingham.
This came after neighbours reported hearing screams outside the property.
A large-scale policing operation continued last night to trace Mr Tarin.
Any IPCC investigation will focus on whether police ignored pleas for assistance from the mother and daughter, who is believed to have recently split from Mr Tarin, and how its call handlers accessed the seriousness of the threat.
“They had recently split up and he kept coming around. They were worried enough to call the police a few times but they weren’t taken seriously,” one neighbour said. Sarah Hollis, another neighbour, said that Ms Oudeh was a “lovely woman” but that the couple had argued “near enough every day” before they separated.
Ms Hollis said she could sometimes hear Ms Oudeh “shouting for help” in her quarrels with Mr Tarin. “It sounded like she was getting whipped or something. You could hear the little boy crying on the balcony,” she said.
West Midlands police appealed directly to Tarin to hand himself in last night, as it emerged that his former partner had maintained two Facebook accounts, one of which said: “I have cancelled all my friendships with all my friends because my account has been hacked.”
West Midland Police is the second largest force in the country, but it has lost more than 2,300 officers since 2010. Last month Dave Thompson, the chief constable, said that increasing demand means the public do not always get the service they expect.