A police officer told her colleague ‘Do not let me die here’ when the Hainault attacker ambushed her with a sword, slicing open her head and cutting her arm to the bone, jurors have heard. Marcus Monzo, 37, is accused of murdering 14-year-old Daniel Anjorin and attempting to kill four others during a 20-minute series of attacks in Hainault in April last year. Mr Monzo, from Newham, denies all charges.
PC Yasmin Mechem-Whitfield was one of the first officers at the scene, taking the lead from her colleague PC Cameron King after he confronted Mr Monzo with PAVA spray while Daniel lay bleeding in the gutter on Laing Close. As PC Mechem-Whitfield already had her TASER drawn, she chased Mr Monzo into an alleyway, heeding PC King’s warning ‘be careful, he’s got a knife’.
PC Mechem-Whitfield, a response officer from Ilford Police Station with nearly a decade’s experience, told jurors she could see Mr Monzo run across the road with a ‘big knife’ before heading into a ‘dead space’ behind the terraced houses. As she chased after him, turning the corners, PC Mechem-Whitfield believed the Spanish-Brazilian national had run back onto the road.
“I was shouting ‘Police officer with a TASER’,” recalled PC Mechem-Whitfield during a police interview after the incident, “That’s when he jumped out. I do not even know where he came from, where he was. At first I did not realise. Repeatedly, he’s hit my head. I thought he smashed me over the head. He smashed me again and again. I don’t know how many times.
“I remember Cam shouting with the radio saying ‘Yas has been stabbed’, and seeing my TASER on the floor. I remember looking down at my hand seeing bone and the inside. I remember Cam just shouting ‘Leave her alone’.” The interviewing detective later suggested PC Mechem-Whitfield had been ‘ambushed’ by Mr Monzo.
Asked what else she remembered seeing, PC Mechem-Whitfield added: “It was so hard on my head. It was like ‘ahh’. It was one of those, I don’t think it went through my mind. It could have been because of the pain.”
‘Do not let me die here’
After looking down at her hand to see if she could wiggle her fingers, PC Mechem-Whitfield recalled PC King putting pressure on her head and looking around for the attacker, while she was in a ‘pool of blood’ in ‘intense pain’.
“I said to him ‘You can’t leave me’,” said PC Mechem-Whitfield, adding: “I remember saying to Cameron ‘Do not let me die here’… I thought I was going to die on that street. I did not know if [Mr Monzo] was going to come back and finish me off.”
After support arrived, another police officer, Inspector Moloy Campbell, was also injured as he tried to detain Mr Monzo, who then entered and left a family home, injuring a dad who was in bed with his partner and their four-year-old child. Eventually Mr Monzo was chased onto a garage roof, then disarmed and put in handcuffs.
Last week jurors heard Mr Monzo skinned and deboned his own cat before the alleged attacks, and was high on cannabis. According to the prosecution, the psychotic state was self-induced and did not meet the threshold for diminished responsibility. Mr Monzo has admitted possessing two swords but denies murder, attempted murder, wounding with intent, aggravated burglary and possession of a bladed article.
The trial under Mr Justice Bennathan continues.
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