Saturday, August 11, 2012

Here we go again.

Well the online world is ablaze (for a given value of ablaze) at the case of Tia Sharp whose body was found yesterday in her grandmothers house, despite 3 previous police searches.
A man, Stuart Hazell  who is the partner of the grandmother (and reputedly the ex of Tia's mother) has been arrested in connection with the enquiry into Tia's death.
Express.
THE partner of Tia Sharp’s grandmother was arrested last night on suspicion of murder after the 12-year-old girl’s body was found hidden at their house.
Stuart Hazell, 37, was identified by a member of the public after police launched a manhunt and warned people not to approach him.
He was held in what Scotland Yard described as “a public place in the south London borough of Merton” and taken to a south London police station.
The discovery of Tia’s body came shortly after 20 detectives moved into her grandmother’s council house in New Addington, south London, for a full forensic search.
There was speculation last night that the body may have been found in the loft or a space above the airing cupboard by a police sniffer dog.
 A quick check around the various online outlets for the hard of thinking (twitter, chatrooms and debate boards) finds vigilantism on the rise as they're all convinced that Mr Hazell is guilty as sin and what he really needs is stringing up right here right now.
Now it may be that Mr Hazell is guilty, however all he is at the minute is under arrest and anyone who believes that under arrest = guilty as sin needs to have a quick word with Christopher Jeffries. Yet already people are mentally preparing the hempen rope with an eye to hanging the guy after a damned good beating up.
This in essence is why we must keep separate the legal system from those who would take the law into their own hands, even whilst having the odd pop at some of the weird (and not so wonderful) examples of justice or the lack of it they come up with. But this is always to be done after the judgement call is in.
We don't know all the fact, we shouldn't jump to conclusions and we definitely shouldn't presume guilt as a given if someone is arrested!

1 annotations:

JuliaM said...

No, we shouldn't.

But the eerie similarities in this case to the Dewsbury one should give us a great big clue!