Sara Sharif: ‘Beautiful’ girl, 10, found dead in her home

Grief-stricken Olga Sharif wiped tears away as she remembered her “happy and always laughing” Sara, The Sun reported.

Olga, 36, revealed ex-husband Urfan Sharif, 41, was given sole custody of little Sara by a court.

The weeping mum – who has been left unable to sleep following her only daughter’s death – shared pictures of Sara beaming for the camera.

She paid tribute to her daughter – who was found dead inside her ex-husband Urfan’s three-bed £550,000 (A$922,610) house near Woking, Surrey, southeast England, last Thursday (local time).

“My life will never be the same again. Sara should be with me right now. She was too young,” Polish-born Olga, 36, who now lives in Yeovil, Somerset, said.

“Sara was an amazing child.

“She had lots of friends at school and she would get on with anyone. Whenever I picked her up I would hear kids shouting ‘Bye Sara’.

“Sara was invited to every birthday party in the class and every sleepover, she was so outgoing, much more social than me.”

The “cheeky” girl – a super-fan of the Frozen Disney films – bonded with her mum over a shared love of arts and crafts and trips to Marwell Zoo with friends.

“Sara was so beautiful. She was artsy, she loved building and making things. We’d go to Hobbycraft and buy everything that she wanted for supplies, her mum told The Sun.

The pair spent afternoons knitting jumpers and learning to crochet, scraping together the funds to buy yarn and other materials despite financial constraints.

“Sara always stayed close to me. She’s the one daughter that I have, and I always wanted a daughter,” Olga said.

“She would go on my phone and take photos and videos with Snapchat filters.

“When she gave it back I had 100 new pictures, and my phone storage was taken up.

“I’d tell her to not take too much but she would say, ‘Mummy, look how I’m looking’.

“I had been teaching her how to ride a bike, and she’d get annoyed that her brother could go faster than her.”

Olga also revealed her daughter had her mind set on the world of modelling – and dreamt of moving to Los Angeles.

“She would walk in and say, ‘Mum, look how pretty I look’. It was always modelling,” she added.

“She was so pretty that I never had to ask her to pose for a picture because every time she looked at the camera she was already smiling and beautiful.

“She would tell me that ‘I want to be like Mummy’.”

“She was like a younger version of me – but much prettier than her mum.”

“There is nothing I can do that can bring her back to life, so I have to only remember the good times with her now. Life is really hard. It’s just not fair,” Olga added.

Three people police want to speak to left the country last Wednesday (local time), hours before Sara’s body was discovered at the family home.

Police have revealed that no other people were present at the property when Sara’s body was found following a call raising concerns about her welfare.

They added that three people they are seeking for questioning over Sara’s murder were all known to her.

Olga said she wed cabbie Urfan at a Surrey register office in November 2009, before the marriage ended in 2017.

Urfan, 41, was eventually awarded full custody of both Sara and her 13-year-old brother in 2019.

‘Sara was an amazing child’

Aside from occasional phone conversations, Olga said she was only allowed to see her children twice in the four years since she lost custody.

She continued to be sent frequent photos of her children until 2021, when she said an argument between her and Urfan’s new partner, Beenish, meant she was cut off completely.

Olga spoke of her fury at the court decision to strip her of all custody rights in 2019, instead handing them to Urfan.

“I always gave them a choice over what religion they wanted to follow,” she said.

But she said their behaviour began to change after Urfan’s influence over their lives increased.

Olga, from a Catholic background, said: “They would not eat certain things because they are not halal.

“Urfan said to me that the kids will be Muslim, but I said no, they will learn both religions, not only yours, because they are living in my house.

“I didn’t want to push the kids. I told them if they want to be Muslim they can be Muslim, but they can choose later in life.”

Olga – who was to see her daughter’s body after a post-mortem – has yet to be told how the killing unfolded.

She plans to take Sara’s body to be buried in Poland after authorities complete their examinations.

Olga – who had been planning to move back to her home country – told how she was informed of the tragedy in a devastating police phone call.

“I was on my way to Poland when they called to say, ‘You need to come to England and come to the police station in Dover’,” she said.

“He told me she could not say why over the phone, but when I called again they told me to pull over, so we did.

“Then she told me Sara had been found dead in a house and I just burst into tears. It took us six hours to get back to the UK.”

“I couldn’t see my daughter for four years, and now she is dead. She’s only a kid. She had done nothing wrong,” she added.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission