Lissie Harper troll sentenced for 'repulsive' Instagram comments

Milo Alejandro, 20, posted sickening comments on Lissie Harper’s public Instagram profile last March.

Mrs Harper had lost her husband, 28-year-old traffic officer Andrew, two years earlier. He was killed in Sulhamstead while trying to detain a teen trio towing a stolen quad bike. He got caught in the tow rope and was dragged behind the getaway car.

Londoner Alejandro left a slew of comments beneath pictures of Mrs Harper, her late husband and other family members. They included the taunts ‘it’s hard to identify a body that’s left in pieces’ and ‘go seek out your nan in hell Andrew you neek [slang for ‘nerd’ and ‘geek’]’.

READ MORE: Lissie Harper troll warned he faces jail time

Sentencing Alejandro to 10 weeks’ imprisonment suspended for a year and a half on Thursday morning, Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram described his comments as some of the ‘most vile and repulsive’ he had seen on the internet.

He blasted: “It is suggested in the report you were reckless about inflicting emotional harm but you agree, saying to the probation officer in ‘offence analysis’ paragraph two [in the pre-sentence report] you felt like s***, you have no control but you could bring someone else down.

“Whatever experiences you may or may not have had in relation to your dealings with the police, whatever views you had, this is one of the most serious offensive [comments] cases I have had the displeasure of dealing with.”

In a victim personal statement, read to Oxford Magistrates’ Court by prosecutor Ann Sawyer-Brandish, Mrs Harper said she’d felt ‘sickened’ when she saw the comments on March 23 last year. The sick slurs were labelled ‘callous and hurtful’.

READ MORE: Latest cases from Oxford Magistrates' Court 

Mrs Harper, who lived in Wallingford with her husband Andrew before his death in August 2019, added: “There is often a misconception that abuse in the form of words on the screen cannot be as damaging as they would be in person. But I can tell you this is not true.”  

She said: “The words linger in my mind and that same feeling of disgust remains.”  

The court heard Alejandro had written a letter of apology to Mrs Harper. He said: “What I did was completely out of character and while I make no excuse for it, at the time I was not in a good mental state regarding my personal circumstances.”

His advocate, David Pallett, asked the judge to suspend any sentence. His client suffered from poor mental health, was remorseful and although he was currently claiming Universal Credit, hoped to find work.

Alejandro, of Fairlop Road, Ilford, pleaded guilty last month to sending a grossly offensive or indecent message on a public communications network. 

Mr Ikram said he had come ‘extremely close’ to imposing an immediate custodial sentence. Alejandro was ordered to complete up to 25 rehabilitation days and 60 hours of unpaid work. He must pay £213 in costs and surcharge.

He told the defendant: “Your words were targeted at the widow of a police officer who had been killed in the most horrific circumstances.

“This was in the context of a case that was very much in the public eye at the time.

“She was suffering from bereavement but the bereavement in this case must have been beyond the loss of her life partner.

“To lose her life partner in such a public and graphically horrific way and then to see her space on the internet abused by you goes beyond, it seems to me, the ordinary impact of these sorts of menacing statements that I do, sadly, have to deal with on a regular basis.”

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