British-Indian student Grace O’Malley Kumar, who was brutally stabbed, fled from her attacker into a front garden and tried to get inside a house before she collapsed and died, the house owner told Sky News.
The woman, requesting anonymity, said she and her family were away for the night, but were told about the tragedy on Wednesday morning.
She went back to the house and “that’s when I was told I was not allowed in, because that’s where it happened”.
Grace “passed on our doorstep” and the house needed to be cleaned “before we can even see it because it was such a horrible sight,” the 28-year-old woman told Sky News.
The council also came over, she said, adding that they got into the house through the backdoor “because there was so much blood they thought someone else had died in the house”.
She said it appeared as though Grace had tried to get into the house, which “breaks my heart even more” because “if one of us had been in the house, we could have let her in — maybe we could have saved her life,” the heartbroken woman said.
The woman added she felt “numb”.
“It’s so devastating. It’s just young lives.”
Of the suspect, she said: “I don’t know him. Nobody seems to know him, but he lives on this road.”
A 31-year-old man, believed to be of West African origin, has been arrested on suspicion of the murder.
Grace and fellow student Barnaby Webber, both 19, were on their way back home from a night out when they were stabbed to death at 4 a.m. on Ilkeston Road on June 13.
According to an Evening Standard report, they were heard screaming for help after they were attacked.
Chief Constable Kate Meynell said: “This is a horrific and tragic incident which has claimed the lives of three people. We believe these three incidents are all linked and we have a man in custody. This investigation is at its early stages and a team of detectives is working to establish exactly what has happened.”
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