Roadworks: the site of the Elianne Andam memorial, outside the Whitgift Centre, where works to install a pedestrian crossing are underway
The memorial mural and bench installed outside the Whitgift Centre last year, on the first anniversary of the death of Croydon schoolgirl Elianne Andam, have been removed.
Sources suggest that this is to save them from any possible damage during roadworks.
The memorials were installed last September close to the spot where the 15-year-old had been been brutally murdered a year earlier. The Bishop of Croydon, Rt Rev Dr Rosemarie Mallett, said at the time that this was a fitting tribute for “a beautiful soul taken too soon”.
‘Beautiful soul’: the memorial mural and bench for Elianne Andam
Photographs emerged on social media today of the site, with some of the pavement having been dug up, and the bench and mural no longer in place.
Work has recently begun on Wellesley Road to install a long-promised ground-level pedestrian crossing on the six-lane urban motorway – more than eight months since Croydon Mayor Jason Perry had the pedestrian subway linking East Croydon with the Whitgift Centre blocked off.
Sources close to the Whitgift Centre have assured Inside Croydon that the Elianne Andam mural and bench have only been removed to avoid them suffering any damage during the works on the crossing.
According to Mayor Jason Perry, the roadworks could take six months, so may not be finished this side of Christmas.
In March, teenager Hassan Sentamu was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Elianne Andam.
Read more: Council cuts off Whitgift Centre by closing subway permanently
Read more: ‘Our failure can be read on the headstones of dead youth’
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