A British police officer is sentenced to life without parole for the murder of Sarah Everard. The murder caused a shock in British society.
Everard, 33, was walking home to London one evening in March when she was stopped by Wayne Couzens, 48. He showed her his police badge and told her she had broken the lockdown rules. Passers-by watched as the black-clad man put her handcuffs on.
Couzens forced Everard into a rental car and drove for two hours to his hometown in Kent, southeast of the capital. In a forest there, he raped her and strangled her with his belt. Her body was found a week later, Couzens had already been arrested by then. He confessed to the murder in July.
Unbelievably cruel
The judge today called the case “terrible, dramatic and unprecedentedly cruel”. He found the abuse of Couzen’s police role comparable to a terrorist attack. The judge also said he saw no genuine sense of regret.
The perpetrator listened to the sentence in silence, but trembling.
The London police fired Couzens several months ago. “We are disgusted, we are angry, we are devastated,” a spokesman said a day before the verdict. “This man has betrayed everything we stand for.”
In Britain and elsewhere many women recognized the story of Everard. The British Outrage got even bigger when the police brutally support meetings broke up because they did not comply with the corona measures.
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