Stream of women lay flowers at bandstand

HUNDREDS of women have left floral tributes in the park near to the route Sarah Everard walked before she went missing. Throughout yesterday, mourners arrived from across the capital to leave flowers and cards on the bandstand at Clapham Common, south London, two days after police officers clashed with the crowds which gathered there to remember the 33-yearold marketing executive in a candlelit vigil. Joanne Beaney, 37, who went there from north-west London with her 13-month-old daughter Kitty to lay a bouquet, said she had found the news about Miss Everard’s death particularly upsetting as a mother. She said: “I feel like the news about when she went missing was just so upsetting, because you just feel like it could have been any one of us. “Maybe I find it harder because I’m a mum, and I don’t know, somebody being abducted off the streets late at night... the fact that it happened is just terrifying.” Ms Beaney said the incident has made her feel less protected by the police, adding that the reputation of the Metropolitan Police force is “quite damaged” by the way officers handled the gathering at Clapham Common on Saturday. “Would I see police in the same way, and would I turn to a policeman when I’m feeling vulnerable, which I always would have done – would I be a bit more fearful of doing that? Maybe, yes,” she said. Verity Mullan-Wilkinson, a 29-year-old actor from West Yorkshire, went from Hackney in east London to lay flowers and a card for Miss Everard. “Coming down here seemed like the right way to pay respect,” she said. “Last week was a really hard week, a heavy week with a lot going on in the press, mixing with International Women’s Day, when you want to feel positive and strong about being a woman, and everything with Sarah was upsetting.”