A sick Instagram troll told PC Andrew Harper’s widow: “It’s hard to identify a body that’s left in pieces.”
Milo Alejandro, 20, posted eight vile comments last year beneath images Lissie Harper had posted to social media site Instagram.
The comments were made on March 23 last year, almost two years after PC Harper died when he was dragged behind a Seat Toledo that had been towing a stolen quad bike.
READ MORE: Tributes to 'gentle giant' killed in line of duty
On Tuesday, Ilford man Alejandro was warned to expect jail time after he pleaded guilty to making grossly offensive comments online.
Oxford Magistrates' Court heard that Alejandro told Mrs Harper ‘YOUR HUSBAND IS SPLIFFED’ and asked ‘how many Chomosones [sic] are missing in this picture?’.
He taunted beneath images of PC Harper: ‘He looks different with his body in once [sic] piece eh?’ and ‘what a neek [slang for geek/nerd] how you a grown man getting packed by kids’.
Cruel Alejandro also commented ‘go seek out your nan in hell Andrew you neek’ and said, bizarrely, ‘the innocent black kids he harassed got justice eh’.
In a victim personal statement read to the court by prosecutor Ann Sawyer-Brandish on Tuesday afternoon, Mrs Harper branded the comments ‘callous and hurtful’.
“I was hurt that someone could be so insensitive to a widow who was going through an already incredibly hard time. I felt sick when I first saw them,” she said.
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Mrs Harper, who lived in Wallingford with her husband Andrew before his death in August 2019, added: “There is often a misconception that abuse in the form of words on the screen cannot be as damaging as they would be in person. But I can tell you this is not true.”
She said: “The words linger in my mind and that same feeling of disgust remains.”
Ms Sawyer-Brandish, for the Crown Prosecution Service, said that the comments were reported to Thames Valley Police last March.
Checks with Facebook, which owns Instagram, led officers to Alejandro. He was arrested on November 22 last year and phones were seized from his home in Ilford.
Still saved on one phone was a screenshot of the comments, the court heard.
An ornamental knife was also found during the house search. That led to a conviction at North London Magistrates’ Court last December for possession of an offensive weapon in a private place and he was given a 12 month conditional discharge. That was his only previous conviction.
READ MORE: PC Harper's widow speaks of her grief in ITV documentary
Appearing before Oxford Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday wearing a dark blue puffer jacket, yellow top and crimson jogging bottoms, Alejandro, of Fairlop Road, Ilford, pleaded guilty to sending a grossly offensive or indecent message on a public communications network.
David Pallett, mitigating, asked the district judge to adjourn the case for a probation service pre-sentence report. Alejandro was 19 at the time and had no previous convictions when he wrote the offensive messages.
He was said to suffer from undiagnosed mental health problems and had previously been seen by child and adolescent mental health services.
The Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram, the second most senior district judge in England and Wales, bailed Alejandro to return to Oxford Magistrates’ Court on May 6 and ordered a pre-sentence report.
He warned the defendant: “I was seriously considering sending you to prison here and now without a pre-sentence report. So be under no illusion that is what I am likely to do when you come back.”
The judge told the duty probation officer in court that the ‘custody threshold’ had been reached, meaning that the offence merited jail time. But he asked probation to look at options that would ‘protect’ the public and ‘punish’ the defendant.
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