French suspect legally in UK before Surrey child murder case, police say

Surrey Police said the man charged after the death of a two-year-old girl in Chertsey was in the UK legally, had leave to remain until March 2031, and was not living in an asylum seeker house in multiple occupation. The case has become a flashpoint online, but the confirmed immigration records point to a lawful route through EU Settled Status, not the kind of housing arrangement some posts claimed.

Officers were called to an address on Pyrcroft Road at about 5.40pm on Thursday 25 June 2026 after a concern for safety. Inside the property, they found the child dead. Surrey Police later identified the suspect as Kevin Kerjean, 31, a French national born in the Central African Republic, and charged him with murder, rape of a child under 13 and sexual assault of a child under 13.

The Home Office confirmed that Kerjean legally entered the United Kingdom and applied for European Union Settled Status in December 2020. He was granted leave to remain in March 2021 and later received an extension giving him permission to stay until March 2031. In legal terms, leave to remain means the state has granted a person permission to live in the UK for a defined period under immigration rules, which can be extended when the person continues to qualify.

Surrey Police also said online claims that the incident took place in an asylum seeker HMO were incorrect. That matters because the facts in the case do not support the version spreading across social media, which tried to link the killing to asylum housing rather than to the confirmed circumstances at the Pyrcroft Road address.

Police said they believe the incident took place within a family setting and that those involved were known to each other. Kerjean appeared at Guildford Magistrates’ Court on Friday 27 June 2026 and was remanded in custody. He is due to appear at Guildford Crown Court on Monday 29 June 2026. The death of a child has prompted a murder investigation, but the immigration status now confirmed by police and the Home Office does not, on its own, show a policy failure in the asylum system or the settled status process.