An intruder who spent 10 minutes in the grounds of Buckingham Palace is a convicted murderer, it emerged today.
Dennis
Hennessy, of Wembley, north-west London, cut his right hand as he
climbed over the top of the wall, which is between 8ft to 10ft high, and
set the alarm off.
He
then walked around the gardens for around 10 minutes towards the
Palace, where the Queen was in residence with the Duke of Edinburgh and
the Duke of York, before being arrested by armed police.
The court heard he was on licence after being convicted of the murder of a homeless man in 1992.
Chief
magistrate, senior district judge Howard Riddle, sentenced him to four
months for trespassing and two months, to run concurrently, for damaging
the wires of the alarm system.
The
break-in has led to criticism of security measures at the palace, with
critics saying Hennessy was allowed to wander around the garden for too
long after scaling a perimeter wall.
Ken Wharfe, a former bodyguard for Princess Diana and Princes William and Harry, said:
'It took seven minutes to find this guy, which is a hell of a long time. Ten seconds is a long time, a minute is a long time.
'In
10 seconds you could run 50 yards, at the bottom end of the Palace that
would take you into the front door of where the Queen lives, that's how
accessible the Palace is from the perimeter wall at the bottom end.
'Once somebody is over that wall, unless you catch them immediately there's no telling where that person might go.'
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