It was a plea that would echo through the quiet streets of Kidbrooke, a plea born of desperation and grief. “Maybe you saw someone acting strangely inside the park or running away from it. If you were in the area, please think back and let us know if you have any information.”
The appeal came from the Metropolitan Police, and it was directed at anyone who might have been near Cator Park on the evening of Friday, September 17th, 2021. They were searching for answers in the brutal death of a young woman who had simply been trying to meet a friend for a drink.
Sabina Nessa had left her home in Ael Road in Kidbrooke just before 8:30 p. m. that night.
She had made her way towards the Depo Pub, a journey that should have taken her no more than ten minutes on foot. But she never made it. Police believed she was approached by an individual and attacked as she made the short walk through the park, a route she had chosen to save a little time.
London, England. A city that needs little introduction. It is busy, vibrant, and full of life and culture.
There is always somewhere to go and something to do. And by September 2021, after months of lockdowns and restrictions, the city was beginning to feel alive again.
2021 had been another tough year for most, to say the least. The 19th of July had been widely referred to in the British media as “Freedom Day,” the day the final lockdown restrictions had lifted after the pandemic. With things returning to normal, people were excited to be out and about, and London was back to being a city that never sleeps.
The streets were filled with the sounds of laughter, the clinking of glasses, and the hurried footsteps of people reclaiming their social lives.
One person living there and enjoying everything the city had to offer was 28-year-old Sabina Nessa. Sabina’s sister described her as a girly girl. She loved makeup, fashion, and especially shoe shopping.
Her wardrobe was bursting at the seams with all of her clothes, and any excuse to dress up and feel nice, she would take it. She was someone who found joy in the simple act of getting ready, in the ritual of choosing an outfit and applying her makeup, transforming herself for an evening out.
She taught a Year 1 class at Rushy Green Primary School, and her five and six-year-old students adored her. She was patient, kind, and creative, bringing energy and warmth into her classroom every single day. She had dreams of one day teaching overseas.
She was open to anything as long as she felt she was doing good and helping people. Her ambition was not for fame or fortune, but for the quiet satisfaction of making a difference in the lives of others, particularly children.
On the evening of September the 17th, 2021, after a long week of work, Sabina was going for some drinks with a friend. It was 8:30 p. m.
on a Friday night. Although now darker and getting colder, it was still busy outside. People were finishing or even starting work, packing themselves onto the tubes or heading out for dinner and drinks.
The city was alive with the energy of a weekend beginning, a collective exhale after the stress of the working week.
Sabina was joining them. She was off to meet her friend at the Depo Bar in Kidbrooke Village. She got changed into a dress and some sparkly boots, and did her hair and makeup.
She set off on her walk, feeling good about the evening ahead. She was only a few minutes away from the bar on foot, so although running a little late, it wouldn’t take her long to get there. It was about a 10-minute walk, cut down slightly if she went across and through the park.
So, this was the route she chose. It was a decision that would have devastating consequences.
The following day, September 18th, at 5:30 p. m. , a man was walking his dog in Cator Park, the park just across from Sabina’s flat.
The dog moved over to a taller patch of grass and started acting oddly. Curious and slightly concerned, the man went to investigate. He saw a woman lying on the ground.
Initially, he thought he’d found her passed out drunk after a night on the town. She was wearing sparkly boots and a dress, and looked to be asleep.
But growing closer, he realized something was wrong. She was covered in leaves and branches, and as he tried to talk to her, he brushed some of them away. Then he saw blood.
The scene was clearly not one of a woman who had simply had too much to drink. It was a scene of violence. He spotted someone else walking nearby, shouted over to her to use her phone, and the police were called.
Through ID in her jacket, they were able to identify her as Sabina.
The police tape marked out a murder scene as people laid flowers close to where a young woman was killed as she made her way through her local park. 28-year-old primary school teacher Sabina Nessa was attacked as she walked to meet a friend for a drink on a Friday night. In a tribute posted online, her sister said, “My beautiful, talented, and caring sister, my inspiration to always put myself first and never let anybody put me down.
Never in my life did I or my sisters or my mom and dad think this could happen to us.”
Police renewed their appeal for help to catch her killer. “I’m appealing for information into the tragic death of Sabina Nessa. Sabina, we believe, was walking from her home address and would have left just before 8:30 p.
m. We now understand that Sabina was planning on meeting a friend at the Depo Pub at Peter Square, which is just over 5 minutes walk away. Her journey would have seen her walk through Cator Park, and we believe as she walked through the park, she was approached by an individual and fatally attacked.”
“Sabina’s body was sadly found by a member of the public around 5:30 p. m. the following day.
As anyone who lives here will know, Cator Park is well used by the community and we are appealing for anyone who was here on Friday evening and who thinks they saw anything unusual to come forward. You will see that we have an extensive crime scene in place and we expected to be here for the next couple of days. We also have a number of high visibility patrols and would encourage anyone who has concerns to engage with those officers.
They are here to listen to what you have to say.”
“Maybe you saw someone acting strangely inside the park or running away from it. If you were in the area, please think back and let us know if you have any information.” The message was clear: someone in the community knew something, and the police were desperate for them to come forward.
Since the murder took place, police had been speaking even more regularly with their partners to ensure that they were doing everything they could to make those who lived there feel safe, without the fear of violence. But the fear was palpable. A young woman had been killed in a public park, in the early evening, in an area that should have been safe.
It seemed she had been attacked just after 8:30 p. m. the previous night, literally just a few minutes into her walk to the bar.
So, her body had been there for almost 24 hours at this point. The attack had clearly been sexually motivated. Her dress had been pulled up, her underwear was missing, and her bra was 𝓮𝔁𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭.
She had been savagely beaten, dragged off the path and into an area of long grass, and asphyxiated before her body was covered over.
The details were horrifying. She had been hit 34 times by a heavy object. Some of her ribs had been broken and she even had damage to her liver as a result.
She had a lot of defensive wounds, too, which showed a prolonged attack as she had tried to fight her killer off. This was not a quick, opportunistic strike. This was a sustained, brutal assault.
The police said this did not happen in the middle of the night. People would have been in and around the park at the time. “You may have been walking your dog or jogging or driving past and noticed something that caught your attention.”
They were banking on the fact that someone had seen something, even if they didn’t realize its significance at the time.
In a really tragic twist of fate, Sabina told people she always avoided the park at night because she thought it was unsafe. She had a fear of that very place, a fear that many women share. But on this one occasion, running behind, looking to shave off some minutes, and probably seeing everyone else out and about, she took the shortcut through the park she was scared of.
She had likely reasoned that with so many people around, she would be safe. She was wrong.
Although dark and grainy, footage of the area would prove invaluable, and cameras had actually caught everything. One camera showed a hooded male marching past Sabina, then looking back at her. There was no interaction between the pair, and she didn’t pay any attention to him.
He was just another person in the park. He then turned around and ran at her before hitting her over the head repeatedly and carrying her into the grass. 10 minutes later, he ran back out.
This footage has never been released to the public.
The investigation was showing that this was definitely a stranger attack. There was no connection between Sabina and her killer. They did get what they thought was a good lead and arrested a man in his 40s, but he was swiftly released pending further investigation and later ruled out.
The disappointment was immense, but the investigation continued.
The local council had now issued hundreds of rape alarms. There was criticism from some that once again this focus seemed to be on women’s safety rather than male violence. The burden, it seemed, was being placed on women to protect themselves, rather than on society to address the root cause of the violence.
As tonight, police continued their investigation.
“You can’t plan around that, can you? She’s just going to meet someone at the pub at a perfectly normal time of day. Um, yeah.
I just my heart goes out to her family cuz how can you account for something like that?” one local resident said, capturing the sense of helplessness and fear that had gripped the community. “It’s quite scary really, isn’t it?”
another added.
Earlier that week, police had arrested a man in his 40s on suspicion of murder, who was later released under further investigation. Sabina’s murder had happened just a matter of months after Sarah Everard had been abducted, raped, and murdered by a serving police officer, Wayne Cousins. Understandably, tensions were already high.
Trust had been lost, and there was still fear when walking out and about. The murder of Sarah Everard had sparked a national conversation about violence against women, and now, just months later, another woman had been killed in the most brutal of circumstances.
Thousands of tributes and posts were flooding in on social media, including one message from the then Duchess of Cambridge. Hundreds of people were joining the many vigils happening as well. The grief was collective, a shared sense of outrage and sorrow.
“We have lost an amazing, caring, beautiful sister who left this world far too early to be a loved family. We had lost our sister. My parents have lost their daughter and my girls have lost such a real loving care and auntie.
Words cannot describe how we are feeling. This feels like we are stuck in a bad dream and can’t get out of it. No family should go through what we are going through,” her sister said, her voice breaking with emotion.
The investigating team worked backwards across all the cameras in the area and managed to piece together a really good amount about their suspect. Another shot showed his face and build very well. He was wearing a big black coat and as he walked, he was looking back and pulling the hood up a bit.
He was carrying something, but this couldn’t quite be made out. Detectives were also looking at a car they believed was connected to the case, a silver Nissan Micra. This had been seen driving in the same area and direction just a few minutes after the man had been seen on camera.
They released everything they had to the media, confident someone would come forward.
The tragic death of the school teacher Sabina Nessa had gripped the nation. It was on the front pages of every newspaper, and the subject of countless news segments. The police were now making an urgent appeal to trace a man seen on CCTV in the area around Cator Park at the time that Sabina disappeared on Friday night.
They wanted to talk to this person urgently. This was the prime suspect.
Also released was a still of a silver motor car, the car that this man had access to. Whether he was driving it or not, they didn’t know, because it wasn’t available on the CCTV to see. But certainly there were moving images of this man in Cator Square off the silver vehicle that they believed he got into.
As yet, it didn’t appear they knew who he was. They were appealing for anyone, any members of the public, to come forward if they recognized the man or the car. The images were a bit blurry, a bit grainy, but they were all they had.
Through the automatic number plate recognition system, detectives got the registration of 60 Nissan Micras that had traveled that way that night. The process of elimination finally gave them a name that matched the person in the footage they were looking for. And 9 days after Sabina was found, a man was charged.
“Breaking news for you just emerging from the Metropolitan Police concerning the killing of the primary school teacher Sabina Nessa. And they say that a 36-year-old man, Koci Selamaj from Eastbourne, has been charged with the murder of Sabina Nessa. That just emerging in the last few minutes.
The Metropolitan Police saying that they have charged a 36-year-old man, Koci Selamaj from Eastbourne, charged with the murder of Sabina Nessa.”
36-year-old Koci Selamaj was from Albania and had moved to the UK 7 years before this. He’d worked in a garage and as a pizza delivery driver and lived in Eastbourne in East Sussex. Although he had no criminal history in the UK, he had been violent to his ex-wife, Fionela.
He was described by the Metropolitan Police Force as predatory. Detective Chief Inspector Neil John, who was leading the investigation, said it was highly unusual to go from zero to a crime of this magnitude, but whether there were more crimes that had gone undetected or unreported really remains unknown.
When they went to his house, they found a pair of shoes with a bit of blood on the bottom. It was Sabina’s blood. Koci was very calm.
He barely reacted as he was arrested. During his interviews, he answered “no comment” a lot and only asked one question: “What will happen to me now if I open up and say everything?” But police had enough even if he stayed quiet the whole time.
The CCTV had pointed them to everything and the blood on his shoes had confirmed it all.
And this is what was pieced together of that fateful day. On September the 17th, he had booked a room less than 10 minutes from his house and had tried to check in early. Some of the employees knew him.
This was the hotel where Fionela worked and was now living since she had fled their home in fear. He left and returned at 4:20 p. m.
, checking into his room and staying just over half an hour before leaving again at 5:00 p. m. The receptionist said that they had felt uncomfortable with his behavior and ended up calling the police when things escalated, but the police didn’t end up attending as the issue resolved itself.
At 6 p. m. , he asked to meet Fionela and he tried to have 𝒔𝒆𝒙 with her, but she pushed him off.
Rejected and angry, police believe he started looking for someone to get what he wanted. Consensual or not, he didn’t care. He then drove 60 miles to London.
He finished his drive at 7:40 p. m. and parked up.
Dressed all in gray, he walked quickly into a Sainsbury’s where he bought a rolling pin, possibly intending to use this as a weapon. He also randomly bought chili flakes and an energy drink.
He then walked into Cator Park and loitered there for more than 20 minutes with his hood up. And instead of the rolling pin, he found an emergency traffic triangle. He stood quietly, concealed by his hood, waiting for a lone woman to walk past.
Sabina became his target. He walked past her, turned back, and started beating her with what they now knew was the metal traffic triangle. This was later found in a river miles away.
She had been hit with such force the triangle had shattered and was found damaged.
After she was unconscious, he carried her to the grass, asphyxiated her by locking his arm around her neck, and then returned to the path 10 minutes later. The postmortem found no injuries that indicated a sexual assault had taken place. But given how she was found, police were confident that this was a sexually motivated attack.
This was premeditated and deliberate. Just after midnight, he was back at his hotel.
He pleaded not guilty. However, his defense team made it clear that he had accepted responsibility for killing Sabina. Questions about whether or not he was allowed to be in the UK were raised.
The Home Office said that at the time of the murder, Koci had the right to be in the UK. However, it did emerge that he had entered illegally in 2015, but his wife was an EU citizen and had greater UK immigration rights. And earlier that year, the UK government had announced the EU settlement scheme, which gave EU nationals and their spouses permission to remain here after Brexit.
Detectives said the whole thing had traumatized Fionela so much that she left the UK. “When we spoke to her, she was very upset, very delicate, as you can imagine, finding out what her husband has done. She has now gone back to Romania.
It’s had such a huge impact on her that she has decided to return home.” She had been a regular face at the vigils. She said to a friend that she didn’t understand what he had against Sabina and that it would have made more sense if he killed her and not Sabina.
This was his first court appearance. There was no formal plea offered, but his lawyer indicated that he will be pleading not guilty to that charge of murder. He was remanded back into custody until the 30th of September when he will make his next court appearance, a bail hearing at the Crown Court.
The murder of Sabina Nessa brought widespread revulsion and a great show of sympathy and support for Sabina Nessa’s family. A vigil was held near Cator Park where Sabina was last seen. In February 2022, the day his trial was supposed to begin, Koci Selamaj changed his plea to guilty.
He also accepted that the murder was sexually motivated.
Sabina’s parents, Abd and Azaban, said, “You had no right to take her away from us in such a cruel way. The moment the police officer came to our house, our world shattered into pieces. How could you do such a thing to an innocent girl walking by minding her own business?
You are not a human being. You are an animal.”
He was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 36 years to serve before he could be considered for parole. He refused to attend court for his sentencing, either in person or via video link. The judge called him a coward.
His violence did not slow down, and a couple of years later, he was given an additional 4 and a half years for stabbing a prison guard. He was in his cell when an officer asked if he would be leaving for lunch. He screamed and began to smash up his toilet before arming himself with a shard of porcelain.
The officer said his strength was unbelievable. “I feel very lucky as it could have been worse. Selamaj is in prison for murder, so I know what he is capable of.”
Sabina’s case became part of pressure behind the broader UK response to violence against women and girls. The UK government has since continued to develop national strategies, policing initiatives, and legal reforms aimed at tackling this. It’s also thrust the safety, or lack thereof, of women as they go about their daily business into the spotlight.
Detective Chief Superintendent Trevor Luri from the Metropolitan Police said the streets are safe for women. People should feel free to walk around them free from fear. And later, a community group handed out information sheets printed from the Met Police’s website.
It was giving tips for staying safe on the street.
Sabina Nessa’s killing is depressingly familiar. A young woman just walking to meet a friend who never came home. Just like sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, who were stabbed to death in a park last year by a stranger, and only months ago the killing of Sarah Everard, just walking home when serving police officer Wayne Cousins kidnapped and murdered her.
But 6 months before it was Sarah Everard’s case, abducted and killed by someone everyone should trust. She was walking along a well-lit main road at a relatively early evening hour. Nine months before that, sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman were murdered by a stranger.
This theory of safety and numbers and booking a taxi to take them home made no difference in their case. We end up settling on a feeling of defeat and fear. Firstly, everyone should feel safe to walk alone, take the shortcuts if they need, wear what they want, and even if it’s dark, still feel like they have the right to be on the move.
These are basic things. But sadly, secondly, even when people are quote following guidelines and advice, it doesn’t seem to make things feel any safer.
“She was bubbly. She was funny.” But her sister, Jebina, believes that her death was overlooked, particularly by the press.
“Why do you think that is?” “Um, it’s down to ethnicity. I do have like a load of newspapers for my memory sake, for my daughter’s memory to remember her auntie and she’s been getting pages seven, pages nine, just a little section of it.
And for example, Sarah Everard, she’s been getting front page coverage. I think every woman that a life is taken should be front page. Doesn’t matter if you’re white, it doesn’t matter if you’re black, or it doesn’t matter what ethnicity you are, a life has been taken.”
Jebina says her sister’s death must be a catalyst for real change. “Sabina’s favorite flower was a sunflower and they grow really tall and she was independent. She had her views and I think that sunflower resembles her and I feel like we should all us women should stand up tall and say enough is enough.”
Students at Greenwich University where Sabina studied established the Sabina Project. The school that she taught at, Rushy Green Primary School, fundraised for a memorial garden in her honor. The wider community also created art and remembrance projects for her.
You can find Sabina all over where she once lived.
The judge’s sentencing remarks were powerful, and we wanted to end on a few of them. “Sabina’s was a life that mattered, a life that did not deserve to be taken in such a heinous and cowardly way. She had every right to be walking through the park all glammed up and going to enjoy herself after a long week at work.
She was an amazing role model who defied all norms. Strove to be independent and was powerful, fearless, bright, and an amazing soul. She died in a way that no one should.
And that will torment them all for the rest of their lives.”
