Abusive killer's manslaughter plea slammed by tortured mum as he's detained

The mum of a woman who was killed by her paranoid ex-boyfriend today blasted prosecutors for not pursuing him for murder.

Cannabisaddict Gogoa Tape, 28, strangled Kennedi Westcarr-Sabaroche, 25, to death before driving around with her body in a car for two hours. He launched the vicious eight-minute attack inside her Vauxhall SUV in Hackney, east London, last April.

Tape, who was armed with a knife and had a history of psychotic episodes after refusing to stop smoking cannabis, strangled and punched the helpless mother of his two-year-old daughter as she sat in the driver's seat after asking her for a lift, a court was told. He was sentenced to a hospital order under which he can be detained indefinitely today at Inner London Crown Court after the CPS dropped murder charges and accepted his manslaughter plea on the grounds of diminished responsibility - a move which has angered his victim's devastated family.

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Today Kennedi's mum lashed out at the CPS for refusing to take the case to trial. Linda Westcarr said: “My daughter was loving, brave, and full of promise. She tried to leave a coercive relationship and paid with her life. The system has failed her, and failed us. No sentence can change the fact that we don’t have justice for Kennedi.

"We can never say she was murdered; we will have to explain to her young daughter the complexities of his conviction which in simple terms says he wasn’t totally responsible, and myself and my family will have to live with this injustice for the rest of our lives whilst the criminal justice system and everyone else moves on.

"As well as this perverse conviction, we have experienced a total lack of voice throughout the criminal justice system, including having to fight for our right to read out our Victim Personal Statement. I have been silenced all the way and the whole journey has been about the offender."

Campaigners also criticised the move. Diana Parkes, Co-Founder of The Joanna Simpson Foundation and the mother of Joanna Simpson whose killer was also convicted of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility in 2010, said: “How many more times will manslaughter with diminished responsibility be used by killers to get away with murder and must be stopped. The family of the victim is left feeling that true justice has been denied. It is wrong to use mental health as a get out clause for killing, as in our case.”

And Emma Webber, mother of Barnaby Webber, whose killer also successfully pleaded diminished responsibility, added: “I stand with Kennedi’s family not just in grief, but in outrage. We cannot allow another young woman’s life to be devalued by a system that too readily excuses violence.

"We must (and will) ensure that this cruel, unjust and archaic system properly reforms. We have called upon the Minister for Victims to pay proper heed to the rights of victims and to the Minister for Justice to bring about long overdue change to the criminal justice system. It's about time the people at the head of these systems and our government finally do the right thing.”

Tape killed his long-term girlfriend at 11.25pm on April 5 by "manual compression to the neck", Julia Faure-Walker, prosecuting, told the court. She said: "There were also blunt-force injuries consistent with his punching her several times and incised wounds to her hands consistent with defending herself from a knife attack."

She added: "During the next two hours until 1.14am, with the deceased slumped in the passenger seat, he drove around the local area." More than six hours after the killing, Tape confessed to his brother.

His brother was woken at about 6am and the defendant told him "I killed Kennedi, bro", the court heard. His brother went to check the vehicle, returned and called the police. The defendant was arrested and later made no comment to nearly all questions in interview, the court heard.

Psychiatrists agree he was suffering from "paranoid and persecutory delusions arising from schizophrenia at the time of the killing", Ms Faure-Walker said. The court heard the defendant had smoked cannabis since 2014 and had some contact with mental health services in 2023 and was "warned to abstain, but would smoke cannabis afterwards".

In April 2023, he was seen in A&E and described "dark thoughts that had been going on for a number of weeks... around harming others in the context of self-defence". In December 2023, Tape told his GP he was no longer experiencing paranoia and later admitted to cannabis use in the second half of 2023 and early 2024, the prosecution said.

Ms Westcarr-Sabaroche, who worked as a social media assistant at the Marie Curie Trust, had been an apprentice for the Prince's Trust and met the now King twice.

Around 40 of Ms Westcarr-Sabaroche’s loved ones sat in the well of the court on Monday as Tape was sentenced to a hospital order under Section 37 of the Mental Health Act with a restriction order under Section 41.

Judge Freya Newbery referenced the victim impact statements Ms Westcarr-Sabaroche’s mother and sisters made previously, telling the court: “She was a bright and beautiful young woman I heard and still only 25, and killed by you just three weeks before your daughter’s, her daughter’s, second birthday.

“That daughter – her daughter and your daughter – is left motherless and the victim of what you did not just at the time, but she has to carry that around with her her whole life – her father killed her mother.

“The family is, I learned, and it is obvious, left shattered and broken.”