Sara Sharif’s head ‘covered with homemade hood’ in weeks before death – trial latest

Police constable George Van Der Waart told the court he was dispatched to the Sharif family home shortly before 3am on 10 August, following Mr Sharif’s 999 call.

Giving evidence, he said he entered through an unlocked rear door and found the downstairs clean with no signs of any disturbance.

He discovered Sara’s body on a bunk bed in an upstairs bedroom with a fan switched on, he added.

“There was a blanket on the bed and…underneath the white sheet I could see a human shaped figure,” he told the Old Bailey. “I pulled back the cover and underneath was the body of a 10-year-old girl.”

He described her as being “placed” on the bed, where she was lying on her back. Asked about the sheet, he added: “It was neat on top literally like it had been laid there.”

In a harrowing phone played to the court, jurors heard Urfan Sharif reporting his daughter’s death to Surrey Police, telling them: “I beat her up, I it wasn’t my intention to kill her, but…I beat her up too much.”

He can be heard crying down the phone, pleading with officers to visit the address and saying: “Can you send someone, my daughter is alone.”

Asked what had happened, he said: “I think she was naughty over the last, three four weeks and I was giving her punishment, but she… to sort her out.”

When asked if she was breathing, he said: “I tried to, to give her CPR, everything but I fail [sic], I left in a panic… She is dead I am telling you.”

He adds that he will return to the property and told the operator it happened about 36 hours ago. He added: “I’m a cruel father.”

• Schoolgirl Sara Sharif was made to wear a ‘home-made hood’ of plastic bags and parcel tape, the prosecution allege.
• The 10-year-old’s blood was found on a cricket bat and a vacuum cleaner at the family home, the court heard.
• Bruises found on Sara’s body matched a belt buckle and plastic-coated metal pole found in an outhouse at the property – where police also found a rolling pin with traces of her DNA, the jury heard.
• A neighbour heard a “high-pitched scream” two days before Sara was killed, court told.
• Another neighbour at a previous address claimed she heard “smacking” sounds followed by “gut-wrenching” screams at the family home.
• Sara Sharif began wearing a hijab to school in January 2023 “to conceal injuries to her face and head from the outside world,” the prosecution suggested.

Sara Sharif’s blood was found on a cricket bat and a vacuum cleaner at the family home, jurors at the Old Bailey were told.

Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC also alleged that bruises found on the 10-year-old’s body matched a belt buckle and plastic-coated metal pole found in an outhouse at the property, where police also found a rolling pin with traces of her DNA.

The schoolgirl was subjected to a “campaign of abuse” and suffered “brutal” injuries in the weeks before she died, it is alleged. All three defendants deny charges of murder and causing or allowing her death.

A former neighbour of Sara Sharif and her family heard screaming and noises that sounded like “someone had been hit or smacked”, the trial at the Old Bailey heard on Tuesday.

Rebecca Spencer said she heard the noises “from the moment” the Sharif family moved into a flat on Eden Grove in West Byfleet in around 2018 to 2019, prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC told jurors.

He said Ms Spencer thought the “banging and rattling” sounded like “someone was banging on and pushing at a door” as if trying to open it.

Reading a statement from Ms Spencer, Mr Emlyn Jones said: “On the occasions I would hear these banging and rattling sounds, they would often be accompanied by the sounds of a child crying or a screaming, followed by complete silence.

“On those occasions I can only describe the silence as ‘deathly quiet’ and I cannot even imagine what had happened to make the crying or screaming child become immediately silent.”

Ms Spencer said she thought two of the defendants, Sara’s father and stepmother, were living in the house at the time.

Sara Sharif’s primary school teacher described her as a “happy child”, jurors have been told.

Her year four and five teacher Helen Simmons said the 10-year-old was sometimes “sassy”, the Old Bailey heard during Sara’s murder trial on Tuesday.

Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC told the court that some linear bruises found Sara Sharif’s body gave the impression of being caused by an object, rather than fists and feet.

A plastic coated metal pole found in a brick out house at the address was compared to Sara’s bruising by an expert.

“His conclusion is that the pole does appear to be a candidate for having been used to cause those particular bruises,” Mr Emlyn Jones said.

The expert also found that other bruises may have been caused by a belt buckle found in a Wendy house in the garden, he added.

Sara Sharif’s head may have been covered with “home-made hoods” made of plastic bags and parcel tape, the court heard.

In the month before the child died, her stepmother Beinash Batool allegedly bought 18 rolls of parcel tape online within nine days, jurors were told.

Police later found “strange-looking objects” in the wheelie bins that were “plastic bags wrapped up with parcel tape”, some of which had traces of Sara’s blood on, prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC said.

He continued: “The prosecution suggest that it is in fact obvious what these items were.

“They are homemade hoods. They had been placed over Sara’s head, we suggest, and then taped in place.”

The trial heard that fingerprints allegedly belonging to her father, Urfan Sharif, were found on one of the bags that was tested by forensics and on the non-adhesive side of a bit of parcel tape.

Neighbour heard a “single high-pitched scream” of “someone in pain” two days before Sara Sharif died, jurors were told.

Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC said neighbours who spoke to police after the 10-year-old’s death said “they had never seen or heard anything which caused them any concern”.

However, a woman had recalled that “she heard a noise that she considered very much out of the ordinary run of the noise from a family house” on 6 August 2023, the prosecutor said.

He continued: “It was a single high-pitched scream, which lasted a couple of seconds and stopped suddenly.

“It sounded to her like the scream of someone in pain, as she put it ‘it didn’t sound good’.”

The prosecution allege Sara died two days later on 8 August last year and the defendants flew to Pakistan the following day.