A sex attacker has admitted murdering a woman after ambushing her as she walked home alone in the middle of the night in east London. He had been released from prison just nine days earlier.
Jordan McSweeney, 29, pleaded guilty to the murder of 35-year-old Zara Aleena, who was attacked in Ilford on June 26 this year.
McSweeney, who also admitted sexual assault, faces a mandatory life sentence when he is sentenced next month.
A brief hearing on Friday afternoon heard McSweeney, who had only been released from prison nine days earlier, kicked and stamped on Aleena and left her for dead.
Aleena, who worked as an administrative assistant at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London, suffered fatal head injuries as she walked from a nightclub towards Gants Hill Underground station in Ilford to catch a train home.
Oliver Glasgow, KC, said it was an “attack upon a lone female late at night making her way home, a woman who stood no chance.”
He sexually assaulted her and stole her handbag, mobile phone, and house keys.
McSweeney returned to a caravan in Dagenham, Essex, where he lived. When police arrested him there they found some of Aleena’s clothes, covered in blood.
3rd Woman in 2 Years Killed While Walking Alone in London
The murder comes nine months after Sabina Nessa, a 28-year-old primary school teacher, was bludgeoned to death as she walked through a park in southeast London after dark.In March 2021, Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive, was abducted, raped, and killed by a serving police officer, Wayne Couzens, as she walked home from a friend’s house in south London.
At the time of her death, Aleena’s family said: “She walked everywhere. She put her party shoes in a bag and donned her trainers. She walked. Zara believed that a woman should be able to walk home. Now, her dreams of a family are shattered, her future brutally taken.”
Aleena had completed a legal practice course this year.
She had only recently started working for the Crown Prosecution Service and planned to complete her two-year work placement in order to become a fully qualified solicitor.
Her family said Aleena spent much of her time caring for her mother and grandmother and added: “Caring for others came so naturally to her. 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.”
After Everard’s murder, women demonstrated against violence by men.
After Couzens was given a whole life sentence in October 2021, North Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Philip Allott, was forced to resign after he appeared to blame Everard for going with Couzens after he claimed he was arresting her for breaking COVID-19 lockdown rules.
Allott said: “Women ... need to be streetwise about when they can be arrested and when they can’t be arrested. She should never have been arrested and submitted to that.”
