Grenfell Tower fire Archives - Citi 97.3 FM

‘Grief stricken’

Mr Holgate said: “Despite my wish to have continued, in very challenging circumstances, to lead on the executive responsibilities of the council, I have decided that it is better to step down from my role, once an appropriate successor has been appointed.

“There is a huge amount still to do for the victims of the fire, requiring the full attention of this council and many others. If I stayed in post, my presence would be a distraction.”

He added: “Whilst the public inquiry and other investigations will get to the truth of the causes of this tragedy and the management of its aftermath, I strongly believe that councillors and officers have always endeavoured to have the interests of our residents at heart and will continue to do so.”

Nicholas Paget-Brown, the leader of the council, said it was with “regret” that he had accepted Mr Holgate’s resignation.

He said: “The council has been grief stricken by the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire and has sought to provide the greatest level of support we can to victims.

“That is a huge challenge and Nicholas has led from the front in seeking to do this.”

The Department for Communities and Local Government would not comment on the resignation.

Since the fire on 14 June, some Grenfell Tower families have been staying in hotels and B&Bs, and there were concerns that more permanent housing would be offered in other parts of the country.

And residents have said that Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council provided little support or information.

Government staff and other London boroughs were drafted in to help with relief efforts in the wake of the fire, with humanitarian assistance being provided by the west London borough of Ealing.

The council’s £8.6m refurbishment of the tower has also faced questions, with suggestions that new cladding fitted during the refurbishment could have made the blaze worse.

The refurbishment will be one issue looked at by a full public inquiry into the fire, ordered by Theresa May last week.

The PM, who is among those to have faced criticism after she failed to meet survivors in the immediate aftermath, has apologised for “State” failures after the blaze. She is expected to make a statement about the fire in the House of Commons on Thursday.

She told MPs on Wednesday: “People were left without belongings, without roofs over their heads, without even basic information about what had happened, what they should do and where they could seek help.”

And the government announced that 68 social housing flats in Kensington Row, about 1.5 miles away from Grenfell Tower, would be made available to survivors.

The funeral of 23-year-old Syrian refugee Mohammed Alhajali, who was among the first victims of the fire to be named, also took place on Wednesday.

His family, who arrived from war-torn Syria, and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan attended the ceremony, called a Janazat, at an east London mosque.

Meanwhile, a number of inquests have been opened and adjourned, with the coroner finding:

Retired lorry driver Anthony Disson, 65, died from inhalation of fire fumes
Farah Hamdan, a 31-year-old nursery nurse, died from smoke inhalation
Her husband, Omar Belkadi, 32, who worked as a courier, died from inhalation from fire fumes
Abufars Ibrahim, a 39-year-old shopkeeper, had been visiting his mother in the tower. The coroner said he had been found at the foot of the building and died from multiple injuries
Khadija Khalloufi, a 52-year-old married woman, also died from inhalation of fire fumes

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Source: BBC

A man who posted pictures on Facebook of the body of someone believed to have leapt to his death from the Grenfell Tower fire has been jailed for three months.

Omega Mwaikambo, 43, posted one video and two pictures of the body bag with the man inside and then later five pictures of the victim’s face and body after opening it to look inside.

He pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates Court to two counts of sending by a public communications network an offending, indecent or obscene matter.

Mwaikambo, who lives just yards away from the tower, had watched the blaze engulf the building throughout the night and had made cups of tea for firefighters as they battled the blaze.

However later on Wednesday morning he saw a body bag outside his flat and took the photos on his iPad and uploaded them to Facebook.

Prosecutor Tom Little said: “He lives very close to Grenfell Tower as the court will be aware for the catastrophic fire on June 14.

“He uploaded photographs and video of the deceased inside the body bag and then five photographs of the upper body and the face and the blood that had drained from the body.

“It appears as if that individual might have been someone that jumped from the tower and had not survived and was waiting to be moved to the coroner’s mortuary.”

After his arrest he provided the police with the pin to his iPad and phone and the images were taken down from the web.

Mr Little said the offences were high culpability because “even the fact of the death would not have been known to the family” of the victim at this early stage.

The court heard the victim has yet to be identified and the defendant had been kept in custody for his own safety after his arrest.

Michelle Denney for the defence said “It was an unusual case” and Mwaikambo, who has not previous convictions, had been making tea for the firefighters.

She said: “He found the deceased person and was shocked by the fact the body was there and felt a sense of shock that the body was there unattended.”

The defendant had tried to find someone to come and help but “there was not one else in sight” and took the photos to “show how the victim was being treated” and get someone’s attention.

She said: “He was not someone that has gone to the scene to look at what’s going on in some macabre way.”

She added her client had witnessed a lot of the terrible things throughout the night, it was an “error in judgement” to post the images and “would not have done so had he not witness some of the traumatic events that unfolded”.

Ms Denney said: “He accepts he should have taken them down and he accepts posting the images was ill conceived.

“He apologises to the victim’s family any all the other victims for what he has done.”

Sentencing District Judge Tanweer Ikram said: “The whole country, if not the whole world, has been shocked by what has taken place in the last few days in relation to the fire at Grenfell Tower.

“The horror is not to be underestimated.

“The dignity of the dead must always be respected.

“What you have done by uploading those photos shows absolutely no respect to this poor victim. To show his face as he lies there is beyond words.

“That view is shared in the horror and disgust that is shown by those people that have uploaded messages on your profile.

“It is an aggravating feature that when people said to you ‘This is really sick, just call the police’ and ‘call the cops rather than post photos’, you didn’t.

“You didn’t remove the photos.

“These offences are so serious that a community order or financial penalty would not mark the seriousness of the offence.”

The judge accepted Mwaikambo had no previous convictions and was remorseful for what he did, but with the events of the fire the case was “unprecedented”.

Mwaikambo, of Testerton Walk, was given six weeks for each charge to run consecutively and ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £115 and and costs of £85.

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By: Mirror UK

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