The week-long hunt for Sarah Everard saw a “serious and significant development” Tuesday night as a serving Metropolitan police officer was arrested in connection to the disappearance of the woman.
Assistant Commissioner Nick Ephgrave announced the development in a press call outside Scotland Yard, when he said that two individuals had been arrested at an address in Kent, South East England, on Tuesday night. One of those was “a serving Metropolitan Police officer”, and was arrested “in connection with the disappearance of Sarah Everard”.
Ephgrave said the man, who was not believed to be on duty at the time of Sarah’s disappearance, remains in police custody. The second person arrested at the address was a woman who is being held on suspicion of “assisting an offender”. It is not known whether either were known to Sarah.
All told, the senior officer said “this is a serious and significant development in our search for Sarah, and the fact that the man who has been arrested is a serving Metropolitan Police officer is both shocking and deeply disturbing. I recognise the significant concern this will cause.”
Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive and daughter of a UK university professor, disappeared on Wednesday, March 3rd after leaving a friend’s house near Clapham Common in South London to walk home to her own address in Brixton. She is known to have got at least half-way home as a security camera caught images of her walking through Clapham.
Police have previously said that it was thought Sarah walked across Clapham Common, a 220-acre park, but that it is not clear whether she returned home or not. Officers have appealed for locals to check home CCTV, smart doorbell, and dashcam footage from the night of her disappearance in hope of finding more clues.
In previous developments, police erected a cordon around a block of flats close to Sarah’s last known location, dredged a pond on the Common, and searched drains. London’s The Times newspaper reports the scale of activity and size of cordon established near the Poynders Road flats “indicated an important development”.