Emiliano Sala: Two in court charged with allegedly leaking CCTV footage of body in mortuary
Sherry Bray and Christopher Ashford face a number of charges over image of star striker
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Your support makes all the difference.Two people accused of accessing CCTV footage of footballer Emiliano Sala’s post-mortem examination, have appeared in court.
Sherry Bray, 48, and Christopher Ashford, 62, face charges in connection with an image of the star striker’s body which appeared on social media.
Sala was travelling his new club Cardiff City when a plane carrying him crashed into the English Channel, north of Guernsey on 21 January.
His body was retrieved on 6 February after an extensive search and a post-mortem examination took place at Bournemouth Mortuary the following day.
The pilot David Ibbotson, 59, has not been found.
Wiltshire Police later confirmed they were investigating an image that appeared soon after on social media as Sala’s family was grieving and investigators continued to search for answers.
The picture, which was circulated widely online, purported to show the striker’s body during the mortuary investigation, leading the Sala family to say at the time that it was “deeply upsetting”.
Appearing before Swindon Magistrates’ Court, Ashford, of Calnein Wtilshire, faces six charges of causing a computer to perform a function to secure “unauthorised access” to a program or data, contrary to the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
On a number of occasions on 9, 10 and 11 February, he is alleged to have “operated the closed circuit television equipment at the Bournemouth Mortuary and thereby caused the post-mortem of Emiliano Sala to be replayed by using the play-back facility”.
Bray, of Corsham, is charged with three counts of causing a computer to perform a function to secure “unauthorised access” to a program or data, breaching Computer Misuse Act 1990.
She is accused of operating the CCTV equipment to record proceedings through the “live view camera facility”.
Bray is also accused of sending an “offensive/indecent/obscene/menacing message” of Sala, contrary to the Communications Act 2003.
It is alleged she perverted the course of public justice by telling Ashford to “delete your pics” on 12 February and deleted the Bournemouth Mortuary post-mortem cameras from the live feed function the following day.
She is alleged to have deleted the post-mortem image of Sala from her mobile phone on 13 February, which “had a tendency to pervert the course of public justice”.
Bray is also alleged to have used the CCTV equipment to play the post-mortem examination of another man, Andrew Victor Latcham, on 24 April last year.
Neither Ashford or Bray entered pleas in relation to the charges against them.
Dr David Whetham, chair of the bench, adjourned the case for a hearing at Swindon Crown Court on 9 August.
He told the defendants: “You are going to be released on unconditional bail until that point.”
Last month, a 64 year-old man from North Yorkshire Was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter in connection with the flight.
Sala’s former club Nantes has also been at loggerheads with Cardiff over the player’s £15m transfer fee, with police issuing a harassment warning to former football agent Willie McKay for threatening to “kill everybody” at the Wales-based club.
It was also claimed that pilot David Ibbotson was not licensed to fly at night and the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) said in an interim report in Feburary that there was no evidence he was allowed to fly commercially.
The AAIB is due to release its full report into what went wrong on the night of the tragedy early next year.
Agencies contributed to this report
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