PC thought she might die as she met ‘demon’ hotel attacker – inquest
APOLICE officer thought she was going to die as she confronted a “demonic” ex-convict who had brutally attacked a young woman, an inquest heard yesterday.
PC Kelda Griffiths described hearing shouting and growling coming from a room at a hotel in Blackwood as she and colleagues faced Matthew Williams, 34.
Mandy Miles, owner of the Sirhowy Arms Hotel, had dialled 999, screaming and crying and telling them that Williams had murdered 22-year-old Cerys Yemm and was “eating” her face.
PC Griffiths waited outside the hotel for back-up and when they arrived she went inside with Pcs Alan Cottrell and Stephen New to confront Williams, who was dripping in blood.
“I remembering entering this room thinking ‘Love you mum and dad’ and didn’t know whether I would survive this incident,” she told the fourth day of the inquest at Gwent Coroner’s Court in Newport.
“If I’m honest, he didn’t seem human and when I heard the growling and shouting... it was demonic. It is like something you see on the TV.”
PC Griffiths told the inquest she was at Blackwood police station when she heard a call coming in shortly after 1am on November 6, 2014, saying “there has been a murder, he has been stabbed in the head with a screwdriver and he’s now eating his face”.
She said as she drove to the hotel she was told the suspect was Williams, who she had known for more than a decade and knew to be a drug user with mental health problems and was violent, especially to police officers.
The officer said she had been ordered to go into the hotel – used as a hostel for homeless people – four times because a life was at risk but instead waited because she knew she would be facing Williams alone.
“The first time I gave reasons why it was not a good idea to go in the first time alone. In the end I refused to go in alone,” she said.
PC Griffiths referred to an incident in 2012 where Dale Cregan lured two police officers to their deaths in Manchester with bogus reports of criminal damage.
“I just believed that maybe he had staged an incident because it was so unreal as that he wanted to get so many police officers there and attack the police,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was walking into. I couldn’t get my head around how Mandy Miles had seen him murder someone and he hadn’t left. All sorts was going through my head. He had murdered someone and I have no doubts that he didn’t like police and we would have been next, definitely.”
The officer entered the hotel and spoke to Mrs Miles.
“Mandy asked why we had been so long and she said it had been like a blood bath up there and we needed to get up there,” she said. “While I was outside the room I heard a growling and snarling type of noise.”
PC Griffiths said she had her Taser ready to fire and entered the room alongside PC Cottrell where she saw Williams lying on top of Miss Yemm.
“As I stepped into the room I recall seeing Cerys’s face which was horrific. I stepped around her and I saw a barb of a Taser had hit the bridge of Matthew Williams’s nose, which Pc Cottrell fired,” she said.
PC Griffiths said that she and PC Stephen New, who had arrived at the scene later, went to handcuff Williams and apply restraints around his legs.
“He was fighting and he was struggling,” she told the court. “I didn’t want to take my eyes off him. I was concerned after what I had just seen he would bite me.”
Less than an hour after police first arrived on the scene, Williams was dead.
Williams suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and was released from HMP Parc in Bridgend two weeks earlier with no support or medication and was placed at the hotel by Caerphilly Borough Council. He had 78 previous convictions for offences including assault, burglary and drug-related offences and had spent much of his adult life in and out of prison.
He had met Miss Yemm on a night out after his release and that the pair spent time together, forming a “flirty” relationship.
The inquest was adjourned until Tuesday.