Chilling CCTV footage captures dangerous sexual predator Jordan McSweeney walking down a main road - just an hour before he murdered aspiring lawyer Zara Aleena.
McSweeney, 29, sexually assaulted Ms Aleena before beating her to death as she walked home along from a night out with friends in the early hours of June 26. She was left to die in the driveway of a home in Ilford, northeast London.
CCTV footage released by the Met Police on Friday shows McSweeney walking down Cranbrook Road just after 1am. He is seen wearing a grey tank top and jeans.
Emergency services were called at 2.44am after Ms Aleena was found with severe head injuries, partially naked and struggling to breathe on the same road. Paramedics took her to the Royal London Hospital, where she died from her injuries.
He had been released from prison just nine days before carrying out the crime. McSweeney had also been seen following a series of other women earlier in the evening before selecting Ms Aleena as his victim.
Sentencing has been adjourned to December 14, when members of Ms Aleena’s family will outline the impact of the murder on them.
In the days following her murder, her family paid tribute to Ms Aleena as a “joy to all of us” who had set her sights on becoming a lawyer at the age of five.
“Zara was friendly, she was everybody’s friend. She was everybody’s daughter, everybody’s niece, everybody’s sister, everybody’s cousin. She was pure of heart.”
Referencing the murders of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa, the family said Ms Aleena “walked everywhere” and “believed that a woman should be able to walk home”.
“Sadly, Zara is not the only one who has had her life taken at the hands of a stranger. We all know women should be safe on our streets. She was in the heart of her community, ten minutes from home”, they said.
“In a savage, sickening, act she was murdered by a stranger.”
Ms Aleena studied law at the University of Westminster and had recently completed a Legal Practice Course to be able to practise as a solicitor. In the weeks before her death, she had been working as an administrative officer at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London.
McSweeney was arrested in a caravan in nearby Dagenham, at a funfair where he was working.
At an earlier hearing, the prosecutor Oliver Glasgow KC said: “‘[This was] a stranger attack on a lone female late at night making her way home, a woman who stood no chance of survival.
“Emergency services were called after her body was discovered on the driveway of Cranbrook Road. She was bleeding, struggling to breathe, had clearly sustained serious head injuries and was also partially naked.
“Police and paramedics attended and attempted to give life-saving first aid to her but the injuries that she had sustained … were so severe that nothing could be done to save her.”
