A TRAINEE teacher accused of strangling his sister-in-law to death admitted killing her just hours after being arrested, a court heard.

Mohammed Sayid, 49, allegedly told officers that he had “slapped around” mum-of-three Soabi Sayid, 29, and then “held her throat until she stopped struggling” at the family home they shared in Hycliffe Gardens, Chigwell, on the morning of Monday April 27 last year.

Mr Sayid allegedly made the admission as he was being driven to Harlow police station for questioning.

And as he sat in his cell later that evening, he also apparently told another officer that “no punishment will be harsh enough for what I have done.”

Mrs Sayid was discovered dead by police just before 11.30am. Her husband, Dr Anwar Sayid, was away working in Somerset, while her mother-in-law, who also lived at the home, had been collecting two of her children from school at the time.

In a dramatic day at Chelmsford Crown Court, it was revealed that Mr Sayid, an aspiring maths teacher, briefly had a work placement at an unnamed Epping secondary school, but left after the school was caught assigning an insufficiently qualified mentor to look after him.

The court heard how Mr Sayid, who has a maths degree and had done a PGCE training course, had taken too long to report that his mentor was unqualified, and then subsequently struggled to find placements at other schools, which had left him “upset".

Taking to the stand, Mrs Sayid's husband Dr Sayid, who works for the Ministry of Defence, said that he had never known his brother to be violent and there were no tensions or disagreements within the family.

He said: “They got on very well. My wife always looked on my brother as her elder brother. He always treated her like a younger sister. There were never any cross words [between them] at any point.”

The brothers' elderly mother, Setara Sayid, said the household had always been a happy one and that there was nothing unusual about Mohammed Sayid's behaviour in the days leading up to her daughter-in-law's death.

She described her son as a quiet and studious man who would spend hours reading.

She said: “He had so many library cards and I always said to him why do you keep bringing books back when you have so many already?”

Breaking down in the stand she said: “I lost my daughter...but life goes on...now I want back my son.”

Mr Sayid denies murder.

The trial continues.