Probation officer Devina Ford missed an email days before Zara Aleena’s murderer Jordan McSweeney killed her in Ilford, East London, because of which he was recalled to prison late. McSweeney had 28 previous convictions and was at large on 26 June, 2022, when he carried out the murder. The inquest heard that McSweeney had been released from jail on licence nine days earlier. Sexual predator McSweeney was released on 17 June but did not show up for the initial probation appointment post his release.
The inquest heard from Austin Uwaifo, a probation officer, who accepted he should have classified McSweeney as high risk instead of medium. He called it an “oversight”. Devina Ford, Mr Uwaifo’s line manager, who failed to supervise Uwaifo’s work better and apologised, agreed that McSweeney should have been classified as high risk as early as February 2021 instead of medium risk. She told the inquest she had been aware of how important her role was in protecting the public and that her work was not up to scratch.
PC Paul Cozins, who worked with the integrated offender management team, monitoring persistent offenders, told the court McSweeney’s case had been discussed at a meeting the day after he missed his second probation appointment. The officer agreed that the alarm bells should have been rung by McSweeney’s missed appointments, allegations he had been drinking, and the lack of information about his whereabouts. However, he did not know whether he had spoken up as “not everything is documented”. The inquest heard it was agreed at the meeting that police should visit his mother’s and grandmother’s homes, but that this did not happen due to workload concerns.
The inquest also heard from McSweeney’s mother who mentioned that on June 17, he went to buy some food and did not come home until the next day in an intoxicated state. On 20 June, McSweeney did not attend the second appointment, and his mother said she had not seen him since his release from jail. The inquest continues, and PC Cozins added that he could not answer with absolute certainty whether the death of Zara Aleena could have been prevented but said that some of the things that went wrong might have been handled differently
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More