A sick Instagram troll who told PC Andrew Harper ’s widow “it’s hard to identify a body that’s left in pieces" is facing jail.
Milo Alejandro, 20, left eight vile comments beneath images widow Lissie Harper had posted on Instagram.
The comments were made on March 23 last year, almost two years after PC Harper was killed when he was dragged behind a car by a fleeing suspect in 2019.
Alejandro, from Ilford, was warned on Tuesday to expect jail after he pleaded guilty to making grossly offensive comments online.
Oxford Magistrates' Court heard that Alejandro told Mrs Harper ‘YOUR HUSBAND IS SPLIFFED’ and asked ‘how many Chomosones [sic] are missing in this picture?’.
He taunted beneath images of PC Harper: ‘He looks different with his body in once [sic] piece eh?’ and ‘what a neek [slang for geek/nerd] how you a grown man getting packed by kids’.
Cruel Alejandro also commented ‘go seek out your nan in hell Andrew you neek’ and said; ‘the innocent black kids he harassed got justice eh’.
In a victim's personal statement read to the court by prosecutor Ann Sawyer-Brandish on Tuesday afternoon, Mrs Harper branded the comments ‘callous and hurtful’.
She wrote: “I was hurt that someone could be so insensitive to a widow who was going through an already incredibly hard time. I felt sick when I first saw them."
Mrs Harper, from Wallingford, added: “There is often a misconception that abuse in the form of words on the screen cannot be as damaging as they would be in person.
"But I can tell you this is not true. The words linger in my mind and that same feeling of disgust remains.”
Ms Sawyer-Brandish, for the Crown Prosecution Service, said that the comments were reported to Thames Valley Police last March.
Checks with Facebook, which owns Instagram, led officers to Alejandro.
He was arrested on November 22 last year and phones were seized from his home in Ilford. When arrested, he still had screenshots of the comments made to Ms Harper on his phone, according to police.
An ornamental knife was also found during the house search, leading to a conviction at North London Magistrates’ Court last December for possession of an offensive weapon in a private place.
Appearing before the Court on Tuesday Alejandro pleaded guilty to sending a grossly offensive or indecent message on a public communications network.
The lawyer for Alejandro, David Pallett, asked the district judge to adjourn the case for a probation service pre-sentence report.
Alejandro was 19 at the time and had no previous convictions when he wrote the offensive messages. He was also said to suffer from undiagnosed mental health problems and had previously been seen by a child and adolescent mental health services.
The Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram, one of England's most senior judges, gave Alejandro bail until he returns on May 6 to be sentenced.
Ikram warned Alejandro: “I was seriously considering sending you to prison here and now without a pre-sentence report.
"So be under no illusion that is what I am likely to do when you come back.”
The judge told the duty probation officer in court that the ‘custody threshold’ had been reached, meaning that the offence merited jail time.
However, he asked probation to look at options that would ‘protect’ the public and ‘punish’ the defendant.
