Detectives are still questioning a serving Metropolitan Police officer on suspicion of the murder of Sarah Everard after finding human remains.
On Wednesday night, the police announced that human remains had been discovered in an area of woodland in Ashford in Kent by detectives investigating the 33-year-old’s disappearance.
A serving police officer in the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command has been arrested on suspicion of Sarah Everard’s kidnap and murder. The diplomatic protection squad is responsible for guarding the Parliamentary estate including Downing Street and the Palace of Westminster, as well as embassies in London. The officer, aged in his 40s, was arrested in Deal, Kent, on Tuesday evening. A woman in her 30s was arrested at the same address on suspicion of assisting an offender. The officer was also arrested over a separate allegation of indecent exposure, the Met said.
Met Commissioner Cressida Dick said that it is “thankfully incredibly rare for a woman to be abducted from our streets but I completely understand that despite this, women in London and the wider public – particularly those in the area where Sarah went missing – will be worried and may well be feeling scared. The news today that it was a Metropolitan Police officer arrested on suspicion of Sarah’s murder has sent waves of shock and anger through the public and through the whole of the Met. I speak on behalf of all my colleagues in the Met when I say we are utterly appalled at this dreadful news. Our job is to patrol the streets and to protect people.”
Investigators are still working “around the clock” on what the Commissioner called a “very fast moving” case. The remains have not yet been identified and it could take some time to do so. People living around Clapham and Tulse Hill could expect to see increased patrols in the area, she added.
Sarah Everard, a Durham University graduate and marketing executive who originally comes from York, disappeared while walking home from a friend’s flat in south London on Wednesday March 3.
Ms Everard is believed to have walked through Clapham Common to her house in Brixton – a 50 minute journey ordinarily. She was last seen on a doorbell camera walking along the A205 Poynders Road towards Tulse Hill at around 9.30pm on March 3.
Police are still asking for residents to send CCTV footage that might have captured her on the night of her disappearance and that they also want delivery drivers and other motorists who were on the South Circular at the same time she disappeared to check their dash cam footage in order to find more clues. After the arrest of the police officer, Scotland Yard announced that it had made a referral to the Independent Office for Police Conduct.