Five weeks before she was murdered, 35-year-old Zara Aleena started work at the Royal Courts of Justice.
ON HER FIRST DAY, SHE SENT A BRIGHTLY SMILING SELFIE to her friends and family, saying she couldn’t believe she was actually there. It was an administrative role that took her one step closer to her life-long dream of being a lawyer; something she had pursued doggedly even as her studies were interrupted by caring responsibilities and financial concerns. After passing the solicitors’ exams with distinction and landing this new job, Aleena felt a new stage of her life was beginning. Her aunt Farah Naz told her: “Soon, Zara, you are going to be a formidable force.”
On the evening of 26 June 2022, Aleena met a friend at a local pub, the Great Spoon of Ilford. They had dinner and a drink there before moving on to a bar, where Aleena drank water. Around 2am, they left. The friend got in a cab, but Aleena walked; she was close to home and it was a warm evening. When her other aunt, Smaira Naz, imagines her walking that night, she thinks of how Aleena always had a spring in her step. “She had this bounce when she walked – it was lovely, so much energy,” she says. “Walking made her feel free.”
Ilford is a bustling, diverse area on the eastern edge of London. Aleena was on Cranbrook Road, a well-lit residential street about 10 minutes’ walk from her home, when she crossed paths with a 29-year-old man called Jordan McSweeney, who had recently been released from prison. By coincidence, he had also been in the Great Spoon of Ilford earlier in the evening, but was ejected after harassing a female bartender. Before encountering Aleena, CCTV footage shows him staggering around the streets of Ilford, following different women. One woman, noticing he was trailing her, dived into a supermarket to hide. He marched up and down the aisles looking for her, before waiting outside. After leaving the shop, she broke into a desperate run when she saw he was still there. Later, McSweeney went into a chicken shop, staring at a female customer with his hands down his trousers, before following her, too. She lost him. He followed a third woman along the street. Two men across the road appeared to notice what he was doing, but did not intervene, and the woman went out of their line of vision when she turned off the road with McSweeney close behind her. When she noticed him,
