Alice’s family ask why her killer was allowed into UK

The family of murdered schoolgirl Alice Gross have told a coroner there is a “public interest” in knowing what checks were conducted when convicted killer Arnis Zalkalns was allowed into Britain.

Alice, 14, went missing in August last year and her body was discovered the following month in the Grand Union Canal in Ealing, west London. Zalkalns, 41, had been named as a suspect in her disappearance, but he was later found dead in woodland nearby. No-one else has been named in connection with Alice’s death.

Police later confirmed that the builder, from Latvia, who had come to the UK in 2007, was responsible, and the CPS announced that he would have been charged with murder if alive.