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Daily Mail
July 30, 2014
The family of a young mother who was stabbed to death after the 999 emergency system failed her are seeking a landmark ruling over the right to claim damages for police negligence.
Joanna Michael, 25, made two desperate calls to the emergency service before being murdered by her ex-boyfriend Cyron Williams, 19, in August 2009.
But ‘individual and systemic failures’ by the police meant the emergency services arrived too late to save her life, the Supreme Court was told.
Ms Michael, from St Mellons, Cardiff, was heard screaming during her second call to police before the line went dead.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission has already ruled Ms Michael was failed by both the Gwet and South Wales police as well as the 999 system.
The commission said officers should have been able to respond to her call within five minutes. By the time they arrived at her home 22 minutes later she was dead, having been stabbed 72 times.
The highest court in the land is hearing a challenge by Ms Michael’s family against a Court of Appeal ruling in 2012 that the police have an ‘immunity’ from being sued for negligence under the common law for the actions of officers during ‘the investigation or suppression of crime’.
At the same time, the chief constables of South Wales and Gwent Police are cross-appealing against the appeal judges’ linked ruling that the family should be allowed to go ahead with a claim that their Article 2 rights under the European Convention on Human Rights were breached by a police failure to protect Ms Michael’s life.
Nicholas Bowen QC, appearing for Ms Michael’s family, said the case was ‘desperately important’, particularly with regard to cases of domestic violence.
He told seven Supreme Court justices: ‘There is a need for a heightened accountability of the police in the light of recent scandals and investigations which have had a very serious detrimental affect on public and political confidence in police services.’
Mr Bowen said the family’s claim was ‘not just about money’ but also a ‘determination to find out really and truly what happened’.
Williams attacked Ms Michael, whose children were home at the time, after breaking into her house ‘in a mad fit of jealous rage’ after discovering she was in a new relationship just weeks after they had broken up.
The court heard that Ms Michael made her first 999 call on a mobile phone at 2.29am and told the Gwent Police operator that Williams had come to the house and found her with someone else.
He had bitten her ear hard and taken the other man away in his car – saying he would return to kill her.
