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		</div><p>A woman stabbed a suspected paedophile to death in the UK then handed herself into police saying her elderly neighbour had been “asking for trouble”, a court heard today.</p>
<p>Sarah Sands, 32, took the law into her own hands within weeks of discovering 77-year-old Michael Pleasted had allegedly abused three young boys, her Old Bailey trial heard.</p>
<p>On the evening of November 28 last year, she armed herself with a knife and stabbed Mr Pleasted eight times inside his flat in Canning Town, east London.</p>
<p>After the “determined and sustained attack”, the victim crawled from his living room and collapsed in his hallway where he bled to death, jurors were told.</p>
<p>Within hours of the killing, Sands had handed herself in to police, telling an officer: “Who houses a f****** paedophile on an estate, like, seriously? He was, like, asking for trouble.”</p>
<p>At the time, Pleasted was on bail awaiting trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court on two charges of sexual assault on two children aged under 13.</p>
<p>Police were also investigating a further allegation he had abused a third boy, the Old Bailey heard.</p>
<p>The court heard how Sands had befriended Mr Pleasted who was a familiar local figure and ran a bric-a-brac shop from a Mace convenience store.</p>
<p>Before the sex abuse allegations emerged in early November last year, Sands used to visited him at his flat bringing him home-cooked meals.</p>
<p>Prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC told the jury that on the night he died, CCTV footage captured Sands entering his block, and then leaving some 20 minutes later.</p>
<p>At some point she encountered one of her neighbours in the street, telling him: “Pretend you never saw me,” he said.</p>
<p>Sands then fled in a taxi to the Isle of Dogs after changing her clothes and putting the bloody knife and clothes she had been wearing in a carrier bag.</p>
<p>Before deciding to hand herself in, she downed a glass of whisky and half a bottle of wine as she told a family friend: “I stabbed him”.</p>
<p>When an officer asked her what happened at the police station, she told him that the victim had touched some kids “so I took care of it – I stabbed him”.</p>
<p>During a police interview, a distraught Sands told how she had tried to help him, taking him food while all the time he was sexually abusing children.</p>
<p>She told an officer: “That’s the devil, that’s who that is. So we stopped that, I had to stop that.”</p>
<p>She explained she had thought Mr Pleasted was just a nice old man, adding: “He’s f****** harmless now, ain’t he?”</p>
<p>Later, Sands produced a prepared statement denying that she intended to kill Michael Pleasted or cause him serious bodily harm.</p>
<p>She said she went to confront him and only took a knife “for my own protection” because she was scared of him.</p>
<p>There was an argument and she produced the knife to “threaten him” at first before stabbing him, according to the statement.</p>
<p>She said she had no idea he was dead until she was informed by police, adding: “This was not my intention. I am sorry for what I have done.”</p>
<p>Before going to Pleasted’s flat, she had drank two bottles of wine and a bottle of brandy, she said.</p>
<p>Sands denies murder and the trial continues.</p>
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