On the wall of her family’s living room, there is a large framed photograph of Alice Williams on the day of her first communion.

It’s a short walk from that family home to Alice’s grave.

“On her headstone, we’ve put ‘joyful, creative, gentle, kind, bright, loving’ because those are the things that we want the world to know about Alice,” her mother Clare tells Sky News.

“We don’t want them to look at that headstone and think, ‘Oh, she only got to nine, I wonder why’, because then her killer has overwritten everything she was. And it’s not fair.”

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Alice’s killer was 55-year-old Qadeer Hussain who, on a Saturday morning, failed to stop at a red light in Halifax, West Yorkshire, as she was crossing with her mother and brother.

“In front of our eyes he ploughed into her, massively fast, and he carried her off on his wing mirror,” she recalls.

“I’ve just got this very clear image of her being swept off her feet and then she tumbled off and, by the time I got to her, it was almost like she was gone.”

In May, Hussain was jailed for eight years for causing Alice’s death by dangerous driving.

Her parents have chosen to speak publicly to highlight the deadly consequences of drivers running red lights.

Her dad Chris says: “It seems bizarre that you would take any risks at all in breaking the law in order to get somewhere slightly faster.”

“The real risk isn’t being caught. It’s actually killing somebody,” Clare adds.

“He’s quite gratuitously killed my child. He slaughtered her in the street for nothing, for no reason at all.

“He battered her to death and any adult should know that when you speed through a pedestrian crossing, there is a risk that you could do that.”

A lack of red light cameras

A Sky News investigation has found that fewer than 1.5% of traffic lights in the UK have red light cameras monitoring them.

Of the 157 local authorities who responded to our request for data or who directed us to their local police forces, many reported no working red light cameras at all.

There are only five in all of Scotland. In West Northamptonshire, the cameras were switched off in 2011 and, in London and Greater Manchester, fewer than 4% of traffic lights have a red light camera.

In Greater Manchester, we also witnessed drivers routinely running red lights at a number of junctions.

Police increasingly rely on dash cam footage submitted by other motorists to take action against drivers who run red lights. The initiative, called Operation Snap, operates nationwide.

Inspector Bradley Ormesher, of Greater Manchester Police, says: “Everyone knows police can’t be everywhere, but a lot of motorists now have dash cams, so effectively they are assisting us in delivering road safety messages. We’ve seen a big increase in submissions.

“There is a bigger picture to everything and just saving a couple seconds by jumping a red light, you’re not thinking about wider society, are you?”

Pat Grace was on her way to clean her local church in Oxfordshire when she was struck and killed by a heavy goods vehicle that failed to stop at a red light on a pedestrian crossing.

The driver Dariusz Meczynski fled the country. He was extradited back to the UK and jailed for three years for causing the 74-year-old’s death by dangerous driving.

Pat’s son Oliver says: “The driver wasn’t distracted just for a second, it was a substantial period of time while he was driving a heavy goods vehicle through a village at 9am. It couldn’t be much worse.

“It could have been a crocodile of schoolchildren crossing the road and he wouldn’t have seen them because he wasn’t looking.

“The chances of being caught are so few and far between. I think there should be cameras on all red lights so there is less chance of getting away with it.”

Dash cams could help

Oliver and Alice’s family are encouraging all drivers to install dash cams.

“We bought a dash cam after this happened,” says Clare. “And we’ve reported four people who went through red lights, and three of them got warnings.

“That is essential because they’re going about thinking they’re invisible and they’re not accountable but actually when they get a warning, hopefully they’ll think again.

“It’s really opened my eyes to how unprotected we are.”

She adds: “We were doing everything we could have done to stay safe. But the only thing that was keeping us safe was a red light bulb and the presumption of goodwill from drivers.

“And I feel like this is being treated dismissively as if it’s an accident when actually it was it was a pure atrocity.”

Red light cameras have since been installed at the crossing where Alice died.

“I’m glad they’re there,” Clare says. “Now they’ve got the cameras and it’s cost whatever they would have cost – plus her life, a lifetime of grief, and all the ripple effects that come from a life without Alice in it.

“She filled our lives with light. She was innocent. She was happy. She loved dancing. She loved singing. She loved us. We just can’t live without her.”

The officer who confronted Marcus Monzo during his deadly rampage in Hainault has described how his hand was sliced open by the killer’s samurai sword, saying: “The blade went very, very deep, cutting through all the tendons, all the muscles and all the nerves.”

Inspector Moloy Campbell was among the first responders on 30 April 2024, when Monzo killed 14-year-old Daniel Anjorin, almost decapitating him, and seriously injured police constable Yasmin Mechem-Whitfield during a frenzied attack in east London.

PC Cameron King who had been with Yasmin when she was stabbed had radioed for help.

“What I remember about that transmission was, that was not PC Cameron King, that was Cam.

“That was not police talk, that was his emotion, he was upset and he was panicking,” said Inspector Campbell.

“The lives of the police officers I was in charge of were at imminent risk… I made the decision, that he needed to be confronted.

“I was confident going in that I would make the arrest. I was wrong.

“But that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be tried, because that’s the job of a police officer, to try and preserve life and effect the arrest, and so it had to be done.”

Speaking for the first time in detail about his injuries, he described the moment Monzo slashed at him as he attempted to bring the attacker down, armed only with a baton and pepper spray (Pava).

“I sprayed him with Pava. He did a triangle block which told me that this is an actual fighter.

“And then he started closing down the distance and slashing at me with the sword.

“The blade went down my arm slicing through my fleece and then nicking my hand on the way out.

“Nicking is the right term but due to the sharpness of it, it split my hand wide open so my thumb was hanging down and I could see inside of my hand.

“So at that point I was simply going to lose too much blood and so I had to withdraw and colleagues put a tourniquet on my arm, at which point I re-engaged and tried to coordinate officers. But I was going into shock.”

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Despite his injury, Inspector Campbell turned his attention to the overall policing picture, as nearby officers brought Monzo down using tasers.

He believes more lives could have been lost that day had it not been for the brave policing operation carried out.

“The actions of Cameron King, the actions of Yaz, and most certainly all of the officers who confronted him at the end and tasered him, undoubtedly saved lives.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

The officers who responded that morning, he said, embodied the reality of policing.

“While I’m proud of what they did, I’m in no way surprised. They do it every single day. There is now, as I speak, a police officer somewhere in this country chasing someone with a knife.”

Three days after the the Hainault sword attack, some of the same officers who had confronted Monzo were back on duty.

They responded again to a report of a man with a Samurai sword, showing what Campbell described as remarkable resilience.

Monzo, whose attack was fuelled by cannabis use, had bought the handmade Katana sword legally online.

While police found evidence of exposure to extremist content, there was no proof he had acted on any ideology.

He will be sentenced later today.

Police investigating the Horizon Post Office scandal have now identified seven suspects, with more than 45 people classed as “persons of interest”.

A “scaled-up” national team of officers has been in place for over six months as part of Operation Olympos – dedicated to looking at crimes related to the Horizon Post Office scandal.

The number of suspects has increased to seven since before Christmas, as part of a UK-wide investigation involving 100 officers.

Four have now been interviewed under caution.

Hundreds of subpostmasters were wrongfully convicted of stealing after faulty computer software created false accounting shortfalls in Post Office branches between 1999 and 2015.

Commander Stephen Clayman, Gold Command for Operation Olympos, described a “huge shift” in terms of their investigation and “significant progress”.

“We’ve got over four million documents that are going to rise to about six million documents,” he said, “but we’re beginning to methodically work through those and looking at individuals who are associated with certain prosecutions.”

He described a “pool of about 45 people plus” classed as “persons of interest”, with that number “expected to grow”.

He added that officers have questioned “some” in the past and “more recently” and are looking at the offences of perverting the course of justice and perjury.

The “wider pool” of persons of interest is made up of Post Office investigators, lawyers, and “management” across Fujitsu and the Post Office.

The team of officers will be identifying actions which could amount to criminal offences on both an individual and corporate basis.

Any decisions made on whether to charge will not happen until after the Post Office inquiry findings are “published and reviewed”.

The Operation Olympos officers are part of four teams – a London hub and three regional teams – who have been described as “highly motivated” across England and Wales.

Police Scotland and the Police Service of Northern Ireland are also helping.

Cmdr Clayman said that officers “will be building a robust case” to pass on to the Crown Prosecution Service.

He also added that, compared to the inquiry, his officers will have to “prove this to the criminal standard…a much, much higher standard”.

He described feeling “optimistic” and “confident” that the teams will have “some successful outcomes”, and said they are “working as hard and as quickly as (they) can”.

Teams are involved in what has been described as a “focused strategy which gets to the heart of the issues”.

Their investigations are being overseen by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Metropolitan Police.

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Victims have also been told that the police will not be reinvestigating every case but “taking a speculative look at cases” to focus on key people involved and evidence for prosecution.

Operation Olympos is also making use of special software to help process the amount of evidence to sift through material in relation to key events and identified cases.

Of the four suspects interviewed under caution, two were questioned in late 2021, one in late 2024 and the most recent in early 2025.