Age: 83
Sex: female
Date: 8 Mar 2003
Place: Horle Walk, Loughborough Road, Hertford Estate, Brixton
Victoria Adu-Mensah was tied up in her home and set on fire.
She was found by firemen at her maisonette at about 9.45am on Thursday 6 March 2003.
She had been tied up by the wrists and ankles and gagged. Her post-mortem stated that she had died from suffocation after being gagged and that she had been suffocated before she had been set on fire.
Her neighbours said that they didn't think that it was an isolated crime noting that she was the fifth person in the area to have been targetted and they thought that someone was watching for vulnerable old people.
The police said that the person that killed her would have smelt of smoke after and the smell of the accelerant that was used to start the fire.
Earlier in the morning Victoria Adu-Mensah had walked her two grandchildren aged 9 and 7 to the lollipop lady on Loughborough Road as they went off to St John's Angell Town primary school at about 8.50am. Her son-in-law said he had left for work shortly before at 8.40am.
The police said that there was no known motive for her attack. They said that it might have been a break-in that had gone wrong.
Victoria Adu-Mensah was from Ghana and had moved to England 8 years earlier. She had shared the ground-floor flat that she lived in with her daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren.
see Lewis Smith. "Grandmother, 83, suffocated and burnt in her flat." Times [London, England] 8 Mar. 2003: 12. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.
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