Alice Gross coroner calls for immigration checks on foreign nationals

Arnis Zalkalns, believed to have murdered Alice Gross, came to the UK from Latvia with a murder conviction and was 'not monitored'

14-year-old Alice Gross (AFP PHOTO / METROPOLITAN POLICE)

A coroner has said she is likely to raise concerns with the Home Office after the murder of teenager Alice Gross, who was killed by an immigrant who arrived in the UK with a murder conviction.

An inquest jury has found that Alice Gross was “unlawfully killed” in a sexually motivated attack. Latvian builder Arnis Zalkalns, who was found hanged in a park after the incident, is widely believed to be responsible for the murder.

The jury found her death “consistent with compression asphyxia”.

Mr Zalkalns had served a prison sentence in his native country for after being convicted of murder in 1988.

He was also arrested in 2009 over an alleged indecent assault on a 14-year-old.

In court on Monday, Ms Gross’s mother, Ros Hodgkiss, said the family “remain stunned” that he was “not monitored or even known about in any way” after arriving in the UK.

Last week, coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox told the jury that evidence given at the inquest did not support conclusions that would “imply that any actions or inactions” of the Home Office “caused or contributed” to the death of Ms Gross.

But after the jury returned with its conclusions on Monday afternoon, Dr Wilcox read out a list of recommendations she was “highly likely” bring up with the Home Office relating to foreign national cases following the inquest.

One of these was that it should become mandatory for all police forces in England and Wales to perform automated Acro criminal records and Interpol warnings checks on foreign criminals,

The coroner also said the Home Office should continue its policy of encouraging all EU and Non-EU countries to update the Acro database and Interpol's warnings list with details of all serious convictions of their nationals.

Outside the Royal Courts of Justice, Alice’s father said: “Losing Alice has shattered me. The pain of knowing I will never see, hear or cuddle her again is unbearable.”

Her mother said: "I still find it almost impossible to believe that our lovely daughter has been so brutally taken from us.

"I miss her every moment of every day. I feel the need to find out as much as I can about how it is possible that she could have been killed in such a horrific way, and to try and change things so that it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

In January 2015, Ms Gross’s parents asked that anti-immigration movements did not use the inquest to further their agenda:

“Alice believed in the free movement of people, and so do we,” her mother said. “For her sake, we are determined to ask these questions responsibly and sensitively.”