A neighbour who posted pictures on Facebook of a dead victim believed to have leapt to his death from the Grenfell Tower inferno has been jailed for three months.
Omega Mwaikambo, 43, was hauled before the courts after posting the distressing picture of the body bag and then close ups of the male victim after opening it on Wednesday morning.
He posted one video and two pictures of the body bag with the man inside and then later five pictures of the victim’s face and body after opening it to look inside.
Today at Westminster Magistrates Court he pleaded guilty to two counts of sending by a public communications network an offending, indecent or obscene matter.
Mwaikambo, who lives just yards away from the tower, had watched the blaze engulf the building throughout the night and had made cups of tea for firefighters as they battled the blaze.
However later on Wednesday morning he saw a body bag outside his flat and took the photos on his iPad and uploaded them to Facebook.
Prosecutor Tom Little said: ‘He lives very close to Grenfell Tower as the court will be aware for the catastrophic fire on June 14.
‘He uploaded photographs and video of the deceased inside the body bag and then five photographs of the upper body and the face and the blood that had drained from the body.
After his arrest he provided the police with the pin to his iPad and phone and the images were taken down from the web.
Mr Little said the offences were high culpability because ‘even the fact of the death would not have been known to the family’ of the victim at this early stage.
The court heard the victim has yet to be identified and the defendant had been kept in custody for his own safety after his arrest.
Michelle Denney for the defence said ‘It was an unusual case’ and Mwaikambo, who has not previous convictions, had been making tea for the firefighters.
She said: ‘He found the deceased person and was shocked by the fact the body was there and felt a sense of shock that the body was there unattended.’
The defendant had tried to find someone to come and help but ‘there was not one else in sight’ and took the photos to ‘show how the victim was being treated’ and get someone’s attention.
She said: ‘He was not someone that has gone to the scene to look at what’s going on in some macabre way.’
She added her client had witnessed a lot of the terrible things throughout the night, it was an ‘error in judgement’ to post the images and ‘would not have done so had he not witness some of the traumatic events that unfolded’.