Sherry Bray and Christopher Ashford charged after image ended up on social media

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Two people have appeared in court charged with accessing CCTV footage of the postmortem examination of the footballer Emiliano Sala.

Sala, 28, had just signed for Cardiff City when the plane he was travelling on crashed into the Channel north of Guernsey on 21 January. His body was recovered on 6 February and a postmortem took place at Bournemouth mortuary the following day.

Wiltshire police later confirmed they were investigating an image on social media that purported to show Sala’s remains during the examination.

On Wednesday, Sherry Bray, 48, and Christopher Ashford, 62, appeared at Swindon magistrates court charged in connection with the force’s investigation.

Ashford, of Calne, faces six charges of causing a computer to perform a function to secure unauthorised access to a program or data, contrary to the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

He is alleged to have “operated the closed-circuit television equipment at Bournemouth mortuary and thereby caused the postmortem of Emiliano Sala to be replayed by using the playback facility”.

Ashford is accused of doing so on 9 February at 9.40pm and 11.23pm, on 10 February at 2.32am and 6.58am, and on 11 February at 1.26am and 9.35pm.

Bray, of Corsham, is charged with three counts of causing a computer to perform a function to secure unauthorised access to a program or data, contrary to the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

She is alleged to have “operated the closed-circuit television equipment at Bournemouth mortuary and thereby caused the postmortem of Emiliano Sala to be recorded by using the live view camera facility” on 7 February.

Bray is charged with sending an “offensive/indecent/obscene/menacing message” of Sala taken from the examination that day, contrary to the Communications Act 2003.

She is alleged to have operated the CCTV equipment to cause the postmortem examination to be replayed on 8 February.

Bray is accused of perverting the course of public justice by instructing Ashford to “delete your pics” on 12 February, and deleting the postmortem cameras at Bournemouth mortuary from the live feed camera facility the following day.

Bray is alleged to have deleted the postmortem image of Sala from her phone on 13 February, which “had a tendency to pervert the course of public justice”.

She allegedly also used the CCTV equipment to play the postmortem examination of another man, Andrew Victor Latcham, on 24 April last year.

Neither Ashford nor Bray entered pleas in relation to the charges against them.

Dr David Whetham, the chair of the bench, adjourned the case for a hearing at Swindon crown court on 9 August.

“You are going to be released on unconditional bail until that point,” he told the defendants.