Jury finds failure "across multiple agencies" contributed to death of Zara Aleena

Failures "across multiple agencies" contributed to the death of Zara Aleena, 35, an inquest jury has found.

Jordan McSweeney killed the 35-year-old law graduate as she walked home from a night out in Ilford, east London, early on June 26 2022, which is exactly two years ago.

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, he won a Court of Appeal bid to reduce the minimum term of his life sentence.

The jury was previously told that McSweeney was released from prison nine days before he killed Ms Aleena.

McSweeney's 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.

Jurors also heard that on the day of his release, McSweeney missed his initial probation appointment and his mother told staff he had passed out drunk at her house.

The appointment was rearranged for June 20 but McSweeney again failed to attend, and when staff contacted his mother she told them she did not know where he was. He missed another appointment on June 22.

Failure to act in accordance to policies and procedures

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.

These included 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 force 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".

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."

A video montage of pictures and videos from throughout Ms Aleena's life was played to East London Coroner's Court on Wednesday, and area coroner Nadia Persaud paid tribute to Ms Aleena, saying "I would like to send my deepest condolences to the family and friends of Zara."

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