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.

The chief of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has called figures by the United Nations on people killed at aid hubs “disinformation”.

The UN said at least 410 Palestinians have been killed seeking food since Israel lifted an 11-week aid blockade on 19 May, while the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said at least 549 people have been killed.

Johnnie Moore, executive director of GHF, told Sky News that there is a “disinformation campaign” that is “meant to shut down our efforts” in the Gaza Strip, fuelled by “some figures” coming out every day.

Mr Moore, an evangelical preacher who served as a White House adviser in the first Trump administration, said his aid group has delivered more than 44 million meals to Gazans since it began operations in May.

The controversial group, backed by Israel and the United States, has been rejected by the UN and other aid groups, which have refused to cooperate with the GHF.

The aid agencies claim Israel is weaponising food, and the new distribution system using the GHF will be ineffective and lead to further displacement of Palestinians.

They also argue the GHF will fail to meet local needs and violate humanitarian principles that prohibit a warring party from controlling humanitarian assistance.

The GHF is distributing food packages, which they say can feed 5.5 people for 3.5 days, in four locations, with the majority in the far south of Gaza.

GHF chief was ‘really political, really punchy’ in Sky News interview

Tom Cheshire

Data and forensics correspondent

@chesh

It was really political, really punchy, and I think the heart of the matter here is that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is too political.

The principle of aid, when applied traditionally, is that it has to be applied neutrally and that is what used to happen.

Trucks would go into Gaza, and the UN would distribute that food. Israel, for a long time, said that’s not working and they blame Hamas for that.

At a briefing by the Israeli prime minister’s office yesterday, they were saying that Hamas was still looting those aid vehicles, and it was coming out with a plan to stop that. It didn’t provide evidence for that.

When we asked for evidence, they said we shouldn’t swallow Hamas disinformation. That’s a word that’s been used. That’s very, very political.

This is a different model of doing things. And that is the concern: that rather than just handing it over to a neutral body, this is too close to Israel, it’s too close to the US, and is backed financially by the US.

What does that actually imply? Well, if you’re choosing where those sites are, it means people are going to move down there if you’re not putting them in certain places.

The number of distribution sites has dwindled. It’s attenuated. And so, actually, if there are only a few and if there are any in the south of Gaza, that encourages people to move there, that might fit a political goal as well as a humanitarian one.

Thousands of Palestinians walk for hours to reach the aid hubs and have to move through Israeli military zones, where witnesses say the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) regularly open fire with heavy barrages to control the crowds.

Both figures from the UN and the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry say hundreds of people have been killed or wounded.

In response to Mr Moore’s comments, Rachael Cummings, Save the Children’s team leader in Gaza, told Sky News that people in Gaza “are being forced into the decision to go to retrieve food from the American- and Israeli-backed, militarised, food distribution point”.

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“We’re not contesting at all that there have been casualties in the Gaza Strip. I mean, there’s no ceasefire. This is an active conflict,” Mr Moore said.

“I think people may not understand as clearly what it means to operate a humanitarian operation on this scale, in an environment this complex, in a piece of land as small as the Gaza Strip, and may not appreciate that almost anything that happens in the Gaza Strip is going to take place in proximity to something.”

Mr Moore said that the GHF was not denying that there had been “those incidents”, but said the GHF was able to talk to the IDF, which would conduct an investigation, while Hamas was “intentionally harming people for he purpose of defaming what we’re doing”.

He said the GHF, “an independent organisation operating with the blessing of the US government”, was “achieving its aims” by feeding Gazans.

It comes after the US State Department announced on Thursday that it had approved $30m in funding for the GHF as it called on other countries to also support the controversial group delivering aid in Gaza.

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A spokesperson from the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs told Sky News that they are “open to any practical solutions that address the crisis on the ground” and are “happy” to talk to the GHF.

The spokeswoman added that the aid distribution in Gaza was not “currently a dignified process and that the format doesn’t follow humanitarian principles”.

She said that people have to walk for miles, and that there is no scalability, with aid not reaching everyone in need.