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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
Lily Waddell

‘Handcuffed, I thought, this is how Wayne Couzens got Sarah Everard into his car’

Patsy Stevenson, 28, said she has “never experienced fear like it”

(Picture: Reuters)

A woman who was arrested at Sarah Everard’s vigil said when she was handcuffed all she could think was: “This is how Couzens got her into his car”.

Disgraced Met police officer Wayne Couzens used Covid laws to stage a fake arrest to kidnap the marketing executive, 33, from the streets of London before raping and murdering her.

Now Patsy Stevenson, 28, has given an interview looking back at when she was arrested at Ms Everard’s vigil on the Clapham Common, in south London on March 13 last year.

She admitted she has “never experienced fear like it”.

“All the time I was being handcuffed and taken away I was thinking, this is how Couzens got Sarah into his car,” she told The Sunday Times.

“I could feel adrenaline pumping through me, hairs were sticking up all over my body. I’ve never experienced fear like it.”

Sarah Everard died in March 2021 (PA Media)

The same laws were falsely invoked by Met officer Wayne Couzens to arrest Ms Everard as she walked home through Clapham.

Couzens will die behind bars as he was served a whole life term order in prison.

Elsewhere in the interview, Ms Stevenson said she “almost cried” when she heard the news Dame Cressida Dick was resigning.

She added: “I thought, thank God. Not only has she presided over a force where systemic misogyny and racism has been allowed to thrive, she’s failed to ensure the perpetrators are prosecuted.”

The physics student has since launched legal action against the police.

Cressida Dick stepped down from the Metropolitan Police commissioner role after a series of scandals rocked the Met force, including the murder of Ms Everard by former Met police officer Couzens.

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