Failures ‘across multiple agencies’ contributed to the murder of Zara Aleena, inquest finds
26 June 2024, 19:00
Failures "across multiple agencies" contributed to the murder of Zara Aleena, who was killed as she walked home from a night out in London in 2022, an inquest jury has found.
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Jordan McSweeney killed Ms Aleena, a 35-year-old law graduate, as she walked home from a night out in Ilford, east London, in the early hours of June 26 2022.
McSweeney was released from prison nine days earlier and was on probation.
The jury found "Zara's death was contributed to by the failure of multiple state agencies to act in accordance to policies and procedures - to share intelligence, accurately assess risk of serious harm, (and) act and plan in response to the risk in a sufficient, timely and co-ordinated way."
There were "significant failures to appropriately assess risk by HMPPS (HM Prison and Probation Service) - the risk registered at medium and should have been high from February 2021", it said.
This includes a failure to identify "significant events" which should have led to the risk being re-evaluated, and that information sharing, decision making, supervision and training were "inadequate".
They added there was "failure to define, understand and execute roles and responsibilities across multiple agencies to manage the offender effectively."
"Attempts (by the Metropolitan Police) to arrest the offender post-recall were impeded by a number of factors, including inaccurate data on the recall and a lack of professional curiosity and follow-ups on Saturday June 25."
The Met also broke policy by failing to counter-sign the recall within 24 hours, they said, and recall was "significantly delayed".
"If the risk was correctly assessed as high, it would have justified an emergency recall to prison, initiating a more urgent response", they said, and even at a medium risk "reasonable recall opportunities were overlooked".
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Based on the evidence, recalling McSweeney could have started on June 20 2022, they added.
Area coroner Nadia Persaud paid tribute to Ms Aleena, who died two years to the day, and said: "I would like to send my deepest condolences to the family and friends of Zara."
On Wednesday, the court was played a video montage of pictures and videos from throughout Ms Aleena's life.
McSweeney was handed a life sentence with a minimum term of 38 years at the Old Bailey in December 2022 after admitting Ms Aleena's murder and sexual assault.
In November 2023, McSweeney won a Court of Appeal bid to reduce the minimum term of his life sentence.
Jurors were asked by Ms Persaud to consider whether failings by the prison and probation services or Metropolitan Police contributed to Ms Aleena's death.
Since Ms Aleena's death, it has emerged police were unable to make contact with McSweeney after he was released on licence on June 17 2022.
Probation then waited five days before initiating his recall to prison.
McSweeney then missed his probation appointment on the day he was let out, and his mother told staff he had passed out drunk at her house.
It was rescheduled twice but McSweeney did not attend either appointment, and when officers approached his mother again she said she did not know where he was.
Despite the lack of contact his recall was not initiated until June 22 and the recall report was signed on June 24 2022. Police were given powers to arrest McSweeney at 4.10pm the same day.
In the early hours of June 26, McSweeney murdered Ms Aleena.
His probation worker, recently qualified Austin Uwaifo, said McSweeney should have been graded high risk and, had he been, he would have pushed for him to have been recalled to prison earlier.
Mr Uwaifo said: "At the time, the thinking was that because he came out on the Friday, my thinking was to give him the opportunity to return - possibly he came out and decided to, for whatever reason, decided to go out and get drunk."
Mr Uwaifo said the probation office was not staffed over the weekend but that he would have requested a faster out-of-hours emergency recall if McSweeney had been graded high risk.
The police officer who actioned McSweeney's recall said initial inquiries into his whereabouts were closed prematurely and more checks should have been carried out.
Metropolitan Police operations sergeant Ian Batten said he did not foresee that McSweeney was a risk to the public after receiving a recall to prison notice for him on June 24 2022.
Sgt Batten also said he did not know initial inquiries into McSweeney's whereabouts were closed before the end of his shift.
