The prosecutor in the case of a British woman’s murder told a London jury Wednesday that the police officer who kidnapped, raped, and killed his victim had made a fraudulent, premeditated arrest under the guise of lockdown enforcement.
According to prosecutor Tom Little, Wayne Couzens was off-duty when he handcuffed victim Sarah Everard, who was walking home from a friend’s house in defiance of lockdown regulations. Couzens previously pleaded guilty to kidnapping, raping, and murdering Everard, who went missing March 3 while walking home from a dinner at a friend’s home. Her burned body was found a week later in the woods outside of London.
“His movements were consistent with the defendant looking for, or hunting, for a lone young female to kidnap and rape, which is precisely what he did,” Little said.
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After arresting Everard, Little said Couzens forced her into a rental car, noting that the police officer owned his own car and would have no need to rent one except to commit the crime. After the murder, Couzens moved Everard’s body into green bags he bought “specifically for that task,” Little added.
Everard’s death triggered protests against gender-based violence and police brutality in London.
During a vigil held for Everard, British police officers aggressively broke up the crowd due to the COVID-19 guidelines at the time.
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“At the heart of this is Sarah, and Sarah just wanted to walk home, and she wasn’t able to do that by a patriarchal society, by male violence, and we have to change that,” Zarah Sultana, a member of Parliament, told the crowd during a March protest. “What I’ve seen from the Metropolitan Police are catastrophic failures at every single level. … Women should have been allowed to collectively grieve. Police should not have been violent.”
London’s Metropolitan Police said it was “sickened, angered and devastated by this man’s crimes, which betray everything [the officers] stand for.”
Couzens is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday.
