Google Street View pic showing EastEnders star’s murdered son, 8, in bedroom 3 months before he was killed is removed
GOOGLE has removed a haunting image showing a murdered child eerily at the window of the home he was found buried behind after disgusted neighbours complained to The Sun.
Tragic Zachary Kent-Blake, eight, was discovered in a shallow grave in the back garden of the house in Erith, Kent alongside brother Amon, four, and EastEnders actress mum Sian Blake, 43.
Hairdresser Arthur Simpson-Kent is serving life after admitting murdering his wife and son.
A Street View picture featured on the online maps software showed Zachary in his bedroom looking around the curtains while wearing a red jumper.
Despite more recent images being taken, the shot from September 2015 showed the eight-year-old just three months before he died from head and neck injuries.
Neighbours told The Sun they wanted the “chilling” snapshot of their street to be stripped from the web after seeing it online.
‘EERIE’ PHOTO
Google removed it by fading over it shortly after The Sun contacted the search engine giant with the residents’ concerns.
One told The Sun: “To have that picture up was very eerie. It was disrespectful.
“We wanted it gone. It’s a little child at his window and not long after he was murdered.
“I’m glad Google has done the decent thing and removed it after The Sun brought it to their attention. It was sickening to see and a shocking reminder of what happened.”
It’s disrespectful and would be like if they took a picture of me out here and then I’m dead next week.
Neighbour Jason Harvey,
Neighbour Jason Harvey, 50, said: “To have a picture like that online is very eerie.
“It’s disrespectful and would be like if they took a picture of me out here and then I’m dead next week.
“My family would want it gone and wouldn’t want to see it but especially in this case as it is a little kid. It’s really sad.”
A spokesman for Google said: “We reviewed the image shared and appropriate action was taken.
“Street View captures images that can be seen by anyone walking down a public street, when users report them to us we work to quickly review and remove them.
“We take the privacy of our users extremely seriously. We automatically blur faces and license plates that appear in Street View, and provide easy to use reporting tools so that people can ask for images of their house, car or themselves to be blurred.
“Images which have been blurred following a user’s request should remain blurred when imagery of an area is refreshed.”
Hairdresser Arthur Simpson-Kent, now 53, admitted murdering his wife and two children at the Old Bailey and was sentenced to a whole life sentence in prison in October 2016.
Sian and her two sons went missing on December 13, 2015. Three days later, Simpson-Kent was interviewed by Met Police after a family member reported the actress missing, prompting her partner to flee to Ghana.
Her abandoned car was discovered in Bethnal Green on January 3 2016, two days before murder detectives searched their home and found three bodies wrapped in plastic buried in shallow graves in the garden.
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Simpson-Kent battered the trio with an axe before stabbing them and inflicting fatal head and neck injuries on all three victims.
The brutal slaughter came just days after Sian said she was going to leave the “unhealthy” relationship to live with her mum following her motor neurone disease diagnosis.
An international manhunt tracked Simpson-Kent to his native homeland before returning to the UK on February 12, later confessing to the murders and being caged for life.