News
Mother: My girl would be alive if police had listened to me
Paul Cheston20.05.09
A mother of a teenage girl stabbed to death today renewed her attack on Scotland Yard for failing to protect her daughter.
Devout Christian Arsema Dawit was stabbed 30 times in the neck by her obsessively jealous ex-boyfriend. Only weeks earlier the mother Tshaymesh Medhane had warned officers that Thomas Nugusse was stalking Arsema.
She went to Kennington police station and showed pictures of the beaten and bruised face of her daughter aftrer Nugusse had struck her in a Macdonald's. Nugusse had threatened to kill Arsema and even when the family were in the police station he was still sending her texts.
Then in June last year Nugusse trailed her as she returned from school and left in a pool of blood in a lift in the block of lfats where she lived near Waterloo station. CCTV cameras caught her geting off the bus and walking towards her home.
Chillingly, Nugusse can be seen on the film shown to the jury just a few steps behind her. The family's complaints are being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission
Today, speaking outside the Old Bailey where Nugusse was found by a jury to have committed the murder, Ms Medhane said "I'm still angry".
She added: "I feel Arsema's life could still have been saved if the police authorities had taken action when I approached them before she died."
She was unwilling to comment further until the IPCC completed its report and on its outcome she will decide how to pursue her complaint.
Since the murder police officers have said that Arsema had failed to confirm the stalking allegation when she had been interviewed at school.
They also claimed that some of the details given to them about Nugusse, of Ilford, by the family turned out to be wrong.
Today DI Clive Heyes said: "It's a tragic set of circumstances and a horrible crime.
"It is true that an allegation of assault was made prior to the murder and that is currently been investigated by the IPCC who will report in due course. Beyond that I am not at liberty to comment further."
Asked if he was saddened by the turn of events, he replied: "Of course I'm saddened by the events of a 15-year-old girl losing her life."
Arsema had been brought with younger brother and sister to Britain by her mother as a place of safety from war-torn Eritrea.
She met Thomas Nugusse, now 22 and also from Eritrea, at their church, St Michael's Orthodox in Camberwell.
But in a two-year relationship Nugusse was so domineering he had only to click his fingers for her to obey his wishes, witnesses told the court.
When she dumped him after the Macdonald's incident he vowed to kill her, telling her mother "I'm going to sort her out and kill her, don't worry about that.".
Nugusse confessed to the murder in a taped 999 call and was seized by police on Hungerford bridge.
In custody he wrote a note: "Arsema, why? All I know is that I love my girlfriend Arsema. I have been with her for two years then she cheats on me with a guy."
But three weeks later he tried to hang himself in prison and, although surviving, suffered severe brain damage leaving him unable to communicate and was ruled to be "unfit" to stand trial.
Two psychiatrists who have examined him agreed he is most unlikely to recover in the foreseeable future.
Nugusse was not brought to court where the jury took just 17 minutes to find he had been responsible for the killing.
The Recorder of London Peter Beaumont QC ordered that he be detained indefinitely at medium secure St Mary's hospital, Warrington.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23695712-details/Victim%27s+mother+angry+at+police+who+failed+her+daughter/article.do
No comments:
Post a Comment