Krystal Hart murder: Police arrest 40-year-old man
Detectives arrested a man on Sunday over the murder of a pregnant woman found dead in her home in south London after being shot twice in the head.
Krystal Hart, 22, was found with gunshot wounds by police in the hallway of her flat in Battersea, south London, on Friday shortly after 11 a.m.
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Media reports said she was three months pregnant. Detectives said a 40-year-old man had attended a police station in south London and had been arrested in connection with the murder. He is being held in custody and no further details were available.
Originally officers thought it was possible the "horrific murder" had followed a long-running dispute about parking spaces that got out of hand.
But Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton said they no longer considered that a likely option.
"Whilst we continue to investigate the possibility that the murder could have been the result of a neighbour dispute, we no longer believe that this was over a parking matter," Sutton said.
Detectives are examining CCTV footage from the building where the shooting took place and are appealing to any witnesses to come forward.
"She was looking forward to being a mum," Hart's stepfather Clive Lawrence told the Daily Telegraph.
"All I heard was what sounded like two backfires of a car. It was only later that I discovered it was my stepdaughter who had been shot."
Local resident Belinda Hodge said news of the shooting had been a shock.
"I'm appalled because we're quite a happy little neighbourhood," she told Reuters.
Hart's death came a day after the funeral of 15-year-old Billy Cox, shot in his home in Clapham, south London.
Cox and two other teenagers were shot dead in separate incidents in south London in February, sparking intense political debate about violent crime and gang culture.
Schoolboy Michael Dosunmu, 15, was shot in his bedroom in Peckham days after James Smartt-Ford, 16, was gunned down at Streatham ice rink.
After the three killings, Prime Minister Tony Blair said the murders were "tragic beyond belief" but rejected Conservative Party claims that they reflected a wider malaise in society.
