By Samantha Jones-
A sexual predator has pleaded guilty to pulling Zara Aleena off the street as she walked home after an evening out, and then kicking and stamping her to death.
At the Old Bailey on Friday Jordan McSweeney, 29, admitted he murdered Aleena(pictured) on 26 June 2022, in Ilford, east London.
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Jordan McSweeney had only recently been released from prison and had targeted more than one woman before he preyed on the 35-year-old as she walked home from a night out early on Sunday 26 June.
At a hearing on Friday, McSweeney, 29, of Dagenham, Essex, pleaded guilty to murder and sexual assault.
McSweeney dragged Ms Aleena into a driveway in Cranbrook Road, Ilford, east London, where he subjected her to a ferocious assault.
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He sexually assaulted the law graduate and made off with her mobile phone, keys and handbag, the prosecution said.
Emergency services were called at 2.44am after she was found with severe head injuries, partially naked and struggling to breathe.
Ms Aleena was taken to hospital where she died later that morning.
A post-mortem examination found she had suffered multiple serious injuries.
Police officers gathered CCTV footage, witness statements, DNA and fingerprint evidence.
Prosecutor Oliver Glasgow KC had said McSweeney launched an “attack upon a lone female late at night making her way home, a woman who stood no chance”.
Guilty Pleas
Sweeney stood in the dock and stared at the floor as he entered his guilty pleas while Ms Aleena’s family looked on in court.
McSweeney, of Dagenham, east London, also pleaded guilty to sexual assault.
He was recalled to prison on 24 June for breaching his licence conditions but had not been picked up.
The Ministry of Justice has launched an internal review into how an offender committed a serious further offence.
Aleena, 35, was attacked in Ilford, east London, and found by a passerby in the street close to her home.
Police described the attack that led to Aleena’s death as a “horrific assault”. She was found with extensive head injuries and partially naked at 2.44am.
The investigation found that McSweeney had been hunting for a woman to attack. He chose Aleena by chance as she walked on Cranbrook Road, an area she knew well. She was followed, grabbed from behind, pulled from the street, dragged on to a driveway before McSweeney kicked and stamped on her, inflicting merciless violence.
Her screams as she was attacked woke up residents who called the emergency services. So violent was the attack that McSweeney left a fingerprint in Aleena’s blood on a wall of the driveway.
On the evening before the attack, Aleena had gone out with friends. She first went to the Great Spoon of Ilford pub at about 8.30pm. Coincidentally, McSweeney was also there that night and can be seen on CCTV looking for women, approaching one when she went outside for a cigarette.
Aleena and friends then went to a nearby sports bar where she drank water and left at 2am. She decided to walk the short distance home. Shortly after she left the bar, a friend checked up on Aleena, sending her a WhatsApp message that read: “Are you home hon?”
Shortly after midnight on 26 June, McSweeney is seen on CCTV recovered by police, looking for women in the Cranbrook Road area. Prior to the attack on Aleena, he spots another woman and pursues her, but she gets away.
At about 2.19am McSweeney spotted Aleena and chased her. She tried to flee, but was grabbed from behind and brutally attacked. Paramedics spent more than 90 minutes at the scene trying to save her, but she died later in hospital.
Aleena had wanted to be a lawyer since the age of five and had a law degree from the University of Westminster.
Since May, five weeks before her death, she had been working as an administrative officer at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London and had previously worked to resettle refugees.
McSweeney was arrested in a caravan in Dagenham, East London, at a funfair where he was working. A search of his caravan found bloodstained clothing and shoes stuffed in a bag, similar to those worn by the attacker on CCTV. He will be sentenced at a later date. The mandatory sentence for murder is life imprisonment.
He had been previously convicted on 28 occasions for more than 69 previous offences including assaults on police, assaults on civilians, theft, burglary and driving offences. One source said there was nothing in his criminal history flagging that he was a sexual danger to women.
After his arrest by police on 27 June, McSweeney refused to answer questions and spoke only to make threats to officers – threatening to bite off one officer’s face – and say that he suffered from an attention deficit and split personality disorder.
Video footage from the area showed McSweeney appearing to target other women before he followed Ms Aleena.
After the killing, other CCTV captured him returning to his caravan in Dagenham, where police recovered Ms Aleena’s bloodstained clothes.
More bloodstains were found on a wall in Cranbrook Road with the defendant’s fingerprint identified on them.
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.”
Glasgow added: “He can be seen on CCTV footage following and observing a number of different women obviously interested in them and their movements. Tragically for Zara Aleena, it was her on whom he became fixated.”
Murdered: Zara Aleena Image:ITV
The killing comes amid heightened concern about the safety of women on Britain’s streets. A vigil to honour Aleena was held days after her killing, with hundreds gathering.
Aleena’s aunt, Farah Naz, speaking shortly after her niece’s death, placed her family’s suffering in the context of the high levels of violence women face: “I don’t think there is going to be closure, this is just the beginning of the conversation we need to have.
“I want to speak to the leaders of this country, I want to talk about the setting up of projects right now to prevent violence.”.
Naz said her niece felt safe walking in the streets where she lived and where she was well known: “Zara was not a woman who was unaware that there were dangers in the world. She did not imagine what happened to those women would happen to her. She didn’t know she was going to be on this list because in her mind she took those precautions.”