Biker dies after crash between four motorcyclists and a Range Rover
The collision happened on the B5340 at Bwlchgwyn, Wrexham, at 7.38pm yesterday.
Emergency services were called to the scene between the A525 and Rhydtalog after reports of a crash involving four motorcycles and a Range Rover Evoque.
Despite the efforts of paramedics, the male rider was pronounced dead at the scene.
His next of kin and the coroner have been informed.
Another rider suffered serious injuries and was taken by ambulance to Wrexham Maelor Hospital, where he remains under treatment.
Sergeant Alun Jones from the Roads Crime Unit team, said: 'I offer my deepest condolences to the family at this difficult time.
'This is now sadly being investigated as a fatal road traffic collision.
'We are urging anybody who may have witnessed the collision, or anybody who may have been travelling or walking in the vicinity and who may have mobile or dash cam footage to contact us.
'The road was closed for some time to allow the Forensic Collision Investigation Unit to carry out their initial investigation and we'd like to thank everyone for their patience.'
Anybody with information is urged to contact officers at the Roads Crime Unit via the live webchat on the website, or by calling 101, quoting reference number C126741.
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Times
2 hours ago
- Times
If police can't stop shop theft, let's try the stocks
The apostle of free-market economics, Adam Smith, claimed that Britain was 'a nation that is governed by shopkeepers'. He meant it as a compliment. But now we are becoming, instead, more a nation of shoplifters. Which we would not be if those behind the tills were actually running the country and in charge of making and enforcing the law. Last month it was reported that annual shoplifting in England and Wales amounted to 530,643 incidents, more than double the rate of 20 years ago, and beating the previous year's unwelcome record by more than 20 per cent. That equates to nearly three robberies a minute during opening hours, according to the British Retail Consortium. Yet that is a gross underestimate of the scale of the problem, since the police-recorded figures are a small fraction of the total: the majority of shops tend to report an incident to the cops only when they have observed the offender in action, or have CCTV evidence. And even in those cases the forces of law and order seem largely uninterested. Last year a fashion boutique called Riccado, a family business that had been trading in Chiswick High Road, west London, for 40 years, was ransacked — not for the first time — by a gang who carted off clothing worth at least £25,000 at retail prices. The manager called the police to say that she had footage of the incident on CCTV, and that it showed the faces of some of the gang. The police never came round, so eight days later the manager went to them and handed over the footage. Immediate result, sort of: next day she was told by the police: 'It is unlikely we will be able to identify those responsible. We have therefore closed the case.' When the police have such an attitude, it is hardly surprising that the shoplifting figures are rising in every passing year. Or that Marks & Spencer had to resort to using a private police force (TM Eye) for a successful prosecution with a jail sentence at the end of it after the local constabulary did not deign to investigate an incident at one of its shops in which a thief, David Hanson, with 105 previous convictions, had been recorded on CCTV smashing a reinforced glass window and grabbing £500 worth of goods. Smaller shops do not have the resources of M&S. Which helps explain the actions of Rob Davies, the owner of Run Ragged, a Wrexham vintage clothing shop, who, after the local police failed to turn up to investigate a string of robberies, put up a sign in his shop which read: 'Due to scumbags shoplifting, please ask for assistance to open the cabinets.' Then, the police did show up … to inform Davies someone had complained that his handwritten sign was 'provocative and offensive'. Perhaps it was one of the more sensitive of the local shoplifters. According to the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley, Matthew Barber, the scourge of shoplifting is partly the fault of law-abiding customers for not taking on the robbers ourselves. This summer he declared: 'If you're not even going to challenge people, you're not going to try and stop them, then people will get away with it. That's not just about policing. That's a bigger problem with society. People who [don't do anything] — you're part of the problem.' Barely a fortnight ago, in an Iceland supermarket in Clifton, Nottinghamshire, two women were assaulted when they did, indeed, challenge a man they saw putting items in his backpack. He put his hands round the neck of one and threatened to kill the other. So perhaps Barber might like to think again. However, there is a way in which the local citizenry could get involved, more safely, in taking satisfying action against convicted shoplifters. If only we brought back the stocks, the ancient remedy of pelting the miscreant with rotten fruit could be restored — perhaps with produce our ancestors could never have imagined, such as (very soft and well past their sell-by date) avocados and kiwi fruit. I made this suggestion, in a slightly different context, a year ago, when a serial offender named Walid Raoul was convicted of stealing a £50,000 watch from Mark Beard outside the Connaught Hotel in London. His accomplice had also attempted to rip the rings from the hand of Beard's wife, Annli, breaking one of her fingers. The judge at Southwark crown court, Quinton Newcomb, suspended the sentence (of two years) because he said he had 'to take into account the current overcrowding of this country's prisons'. Mr and Mrs Beard, understandably, were not impressed. Those prisons have become still more overcrowded, with the result that convicted shoplifters (the unlucky small minority who are successfully prosecuted) are even less likely to do time. My point was that, as one historian noted, the public stocks, as a form of punishment, had been 'rendered obsolete by the development of the modern prison system, which took justice out of the town square and moved it behind bars'; so, if our judges were declaring our 'modern prison system' unavailable, because of overbooking and underbuilding, it might be necessary to return to the status quo ante. It could be implemented quickly — at least in the sense that while the pillory was excised from the statute book in 1837, the stocks are still available. In fact, a 1405 statute, which has never been abolished, requires every town to have a set. A most visible deterrent for (very) common thieves. One legislator has since proposed something along these lines. He is the Labour peer Lord Glasman, who recently declared: 'I'm quite in favour of public humiliation of these shoplifters: bringing back the stocks, pelting them with rotten fruit. The old ways are the good ways!' I got in touch with Glasman, using the not quite so medieval means of WhatsApp to tell him: 'Last year I advocated the return of the stocks. Unaccountably the then Conservative government failed to take up my suggestion. But with your influence in the Labour Party, I'm sure Keir Starmer will listen.' 'Ho, ho, ho,' was Glasman's reply. Yet his point about the deterrent value of public humiliation was serious. In the world we live in, however, when it was recently suggested that shopkeepers might put up photo images of local thieves — a very dilute form of the same idea — they were warned by the Information Commissioner's Office that this 'may not be appropriate', on the grounds that retailers 'must only share personal information that's proportionate and necessary to achieve your purpose'. So, no shaming for the perpetrators of a shockingly increasing crime that is ravaging our already ailing high streets. And no respite for the shopkeepers who are at the heart of communities. It doesn't exactly make you proud to be British.
BBC News
4 hours ago
- BBC News
Treasure hunters stealing from Wales' historical sites
As darkness falls in one corner of Wales, police officers begin their hunt for treasure thieves - a crime that would sound like fantasy if it wasn't for the Gwent Police's patch, the hills are littered with ancient forts and Roman remains - and have become a regular target for those hoping to unearth rare artefacts for the black investigators are left with nothing but a hole in the ground - with little idea of what has been stolen or its value - though some looted treasures have been worth as it is nicknamed, is now seen as a genuine threat to the nation's heritage. PC Dan Counsell had never heard of the term nighthawking before he took a call in September was told locals of an ancient village near Chepstow had awoken to find more than 50 holes mysteriously dug among the gravestones of their churchyard. Residents were horrified and newspaper headlines spoke of "grave robbers."PC Counsell understood the upset - many of his own family members, including grandparents, were buried truth the robbers weren't interested in the dead, but the artefacts that may be buried beyond them, deep into the it became a Christian church about 700 years ago, there were Romans here. Among the holes, some dug on top of the graves themselves, were discarded bits of old metal - a telltale sign that those practising in the "darker underbelly" of metal detecting had been in the archaeological community as nighthawkers, they use the cover of darkness to access sites they have no legal right to disturb in the hope of unearthing do it for the thrill of building their own private collection, others are thought to smuggle items abroad in the hopes of selling them to the highest not uncommon for illicit finds to appear on online auction and police point out this is a small number of people in an otherwise hugely respectful community of metal detectorists. In one of the most recent high-profile cases, two men from south Wales were found guilty of stealing a hoard of Viking gold from Herefordshire worth £3m - most of it has never been PC Counsell's first case in the graveyard, he began looking out for the two years his team had uncovered 23 suspected incidents in the force's patch - a 600 sq mile (1,550 sq km) corner of south-east Wales peppered with imposing castles, ancient hill forts and Roman ruins. Reports of people in fields at night and mysterious holes being discovered has all led PC Counsell's team to uncover cases of said one of the most worrying things was that most targeted Scheduled Monuments - a term used in the UK to describe archaeological areas of great national importance. Cadw, the authority charged with protecting Wales' 4,000-plus protected ancient sites, said it saw 10 to 20 nighthawking incidents each year, but that the nature of it meant was very likely often relies on an eagle-eyed member of the public spotting an unusual hole in the ground and deciding to report it to police, rather than discounting it as the work of a badger or rabbit. Dr Jonathan Berry, Cadw's senior inspector of ancient monuments and archaeology, said sometimes there were innocent explanations, like hobbyists not understanding the rules. Others, however, were motivated by "greed", with elements of organised crime."In terms of where these things go, that's kind of murky, but very often finds are sold on things like online auction houses, antiques centres, things like that," he said."It could also just be private networks, social media. You can find items of significant rarity and value can be out of the country and in other collections very quickly." According to police, often the sites targeted are remote, treacherous even, and reminiscent of an Indiana Jones expedition - minus the booby site PC Counsell takes us to, a series of standing stones, is through dense woodland, up a steep mountain track - even in a 4x4 with a trained police driver it's a hairy think treasure hunters could be making the journey in the pitch-black sounds fanciful and yet this site has fallen victim to nighthawking multiple times."Clearly their remoteness is attractive to potential criminals. They see these sites as being safe in terms of not being disturbed or apprehended."In an attempt to even the odds, the rural crime team has been using thermal imaging cameras attached to drones and binoculars capable of picking out suspected treasure thieves on a pitch-black mountain that helped them catch a suspected nighthawker hiding behind a pile of manure after his footprints on the fresh dung heap shone up on thermal imaging."It's a really hard crime to detect," said PC Counsell."Yet on at least six to eight occasions we've discovered people illegally metal detecting." None of those caught so far have been the ones accessing Wales' legally protected ancient sites, but Gwent Police hopes the frequent night patrols and new technology will get results."The sadness around it all is that these are scheduled ancient monuments for a reason - because they are recognised as being of national historical importance," said PC Counsell."If something is removed that we are unaware of, it could be really important, we just don't know. "Once that item is gone it's gone forever. It's having a big impact on the nation's heritage." When somebody finds something that could be treasure, they have a legal obligation to declare are not allowed to keep it, but if they followed the rules and unearthed it from land they had permission to be on - then they will be paid a share of its value once it's bought by a sees experts such as Sian Iles, a curator at the National Museum of Wales, brought in to give their verdict on whether any potential item meets the threshold for are several steps, but loosely speaking an item should be "old and gold".In Wales the general threshold is more than 300 years old and made up of at least 10% precious metal."Every treasure find helps us to build a picture about the decisions people in Wales were making in that time period, about their fashions or their beliefs," said Ms Iles. The senior curator of Medieval and later archaeology said the number of finds being declared to the National Museum had been going up year-on-year since Iles and her colleagues assess about 70 potential pieces of treasure each year and believe the vast majority of metal detectorists are doing the right thing and wanted their finds to be used to help recently helped assess a silver thimble found in a field in Flintshire by metal detectorists which was then declared added: "Even the smallest object can really bring in important information about people in the past."
The Sun
7 hours ago
- The Sun
Moment unsuspecting painter is sent flying through air in terrifying crash after car comes out of nowhere
THIS is the terrifying moment a painter is sent flying through the air in a horrifying crash after a car comes out of nowhere. The unidentified man is thought to have been working on a property in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, on August 13. 5 5 At the start of the footage he is seen wearing a blue t-shirt and black shorts and half way up a ladder working away. His white van is parked close by and his equipment is spread out on the pavement below him. A white car passes by as he climbs down and moves out of sight of the camera. The video then cuts to him standing in the middle of the road examining his work. The painter then moves off the road and towards his van as a grey car drives along the road. While he is standing next to his van a car, initially out of shot can be heard hurtling along the road. The sound of the motor's brakes screeching then rings out on the footage. A greyish-white car can then be seen slamming into the back of the van. The parked van is pushed into the painter with immense force sending the poor man flying. The car, having collided with the van, veers across the road and spins around before coming to a halt. Moment 'worst driver ever seen' sends TWO cars flying in horror 100mph crash during police chase The painter is thrown into the air and looks to smash into the wall of a nearby building. He tumbles end over end across the pavement before finding his feet. Fortunately, the painter although seemingly a little dazed by the accident, appears to be uninjured. He is seen walking along the middle of the road and appears to mutter to himself: 'F**k me' as he heads back towards his van. 5 5 He puts a hand to his head as he approaches his van to inspect the damage done to it. Looking at the back of his now smashed up van the painter wanders out of shot as he recovers from the shock of the impact. The silver car is left wrecked in the middle of the road with parts of it strewn across the tarmac. It is unclear if the driver of the car suffered any injuries in the collision. The Sun has contacted Durham Police for comment and further information.
