Bournemouth air and sea search for missing nine-year-old girl
Insp Robin Morgan said: "We are growing concerned for Salimatou's welfare and are carrying out searches to try and locate her."I would urge anyone who has seen Salimatou, or a child matching the description given, to please get in touch."
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The Independent
26 minutes ago
- The Independent
Lucy Letby's lawyer says killer nurse has ‘new hope'
Child killer Lucy Letby was a 'broken person' but now has a 'new hope', her barrister has said. Letby's parents contacted Mark McDonald almost a year ago and requested he take over from her previous lawyer and free her from prison, he said in an interview with the Sunday Times. A week later he met the killer, who is serving 15 whole-life orders after murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016. Mr McDonald said he is submitting 'new evidence' to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, and has also spent the past year working to boost public criticism of her convictions. He gathered a panel of 14 neonatal and paediatric experts, shared the babies' medical notes with them, and held a press conference casting doubt on the prosecution's case. Lawyers for the families of Letby's victims previously rubbished the panel's findings as 'full of analytical holes' and 'a rehash' of the defence case heard at trial. In July, Cheshire Police passed evidence of further allegations related to baby deaths and collapses at the hospitals where Letby, 35, worked. Mr McDonald, who is known for making high-profile appeals, told the Sunday Times: 'Remember, 12 months ago, she'd lost every argument. She had been saying that she was not guilty right from the beginning and nobody believed her. 'She went through a whole trial and she was convicted. She went to the Court of Appeal and she was convicted. 'She had a retrial; she was convicted. She went to the Court of Appeal again; she was convicted. And that was it. 'There, you have a broken person. But today, after everything that has happened in the last 12 months, she's got new hope.' McDonald, 59, estimated he has spent thousands of hours on Letby's case and spoke to the newspaper while on holiday with his two children, aged three and four. He said he speaks to the killer at least once every two weeks and visits her each month at Bronzefield prison, in Ashford, Surrey. 'I'm on holiday in Devon and I'm working on (the case). I had a telephone conference with Lucy yesterday. I won't stop. I will not stop until she is out,' he said. It is important to 'win the public narrative' of a potential miscarriage of justice case before taking on the legal narrative, because 'the Court of Appeal will know that the country is going to be looking at them', he added. The barrister claimed he has never submitted this much evidence to the CCRC and 'if this is not referred back to the Court of Appeal then one has to question the purpose of the CCRC'. The possible potential offences against Letby are now being considered by lawyers at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). The news emerged hours after police confirmed three people who were part of the senior leadership team at the hospital where Letby worked have been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter. Cheshire Constabulary said the suspects, who occupied senior positions at the Countess of Chester Hospital (CoCH) between 2015 and 2016, were arrested and later bailed pending further inquiries. Police said corporate manslaughter and gross negligence manslaughter probes are continuing. Mr McDonald previously said the police's announcement about potential new charges against Letby came at a 'very sensitive time' and that a proper and full public inquiry into failings by the hospital is needed. In the latest interview, Mr McDonald told the Sunday Times: 'I'm not naive; I'm a criminal defence barrister – I've represented many people over the years who are guilty. 'But I'm also able to see very clearly where this has gone wrong. There's no forensic evidence. There's no CCTV. There's no eyewitness evidence. 'There's just a theory by a man called Dewi Evans,' he said, referring to the person who was the lead prosecution medical expert in her trial.
The Sun
27 minutes ago
- The Sun
Brazen shoplifters being set free by courts to offend again, says policing chief
BRAZEN shoplifters are being set free by courts to offend again, a policing chief has said. Katy Bourne described it as 'madness' how often they had to be arrested before ending up behind bars. 2 Ms Bourne, the national lead for shoplifting at the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, said: 'People have got to know that they're going to get caught and that there's a meaningful deterrent when they do it. There is no point arresting shoplifters if there is no effective deterrent.' Launching a scheme to electronically tag thieves, she insisted only 'meaningful criminal justice measures' would stop the huge rise in shoplifting blighting Britain's high streets. Her comments came after The Sun revealed gangs of migrant shoplifters were targeting London's Oxford Street. We also exposed thieves stripping shelves bare at Greggs stores across the county. Theft from shops hit a record high last year, with the number of offences topping 500,000 for the first time, up 20 per cent from 2023. Ms Bourne, police and crime commissioner for Sussex, said: 'What on earth has happened to our high streets and our city centres? Why do some people feel they can rob shops with impunity and abuse and assault staff without any fear of retribution?' She told the Daily Telegraph: 'If prison is not an option — and I think it should be but at the moment it clearly isn't as there are no places — then we've got to find credible alternatives.' She said Sussex would have the first electronic tagging scheme for shoplifters having struggled to get such a scheme rolled out nationally. She also criticised the use of data protection laws to advise shopkeepers not to share images of suspected offenders. It comes after police spoke to a shopkeeper in Wrexham, North Wales, over his sign about 'scumbag shoplifters'. N-ICE ONE- Iceland boss says customers will be PAID to snitch on thieves She commented: 'How have we got to the point where police forces are more worried about upsetting career criminals than catching them?' Boots is stashing medical products, including fertility supplements, behind counters amid the shoplifting epidemic. And an alarm sounds if a bar of chocolate is picked up at some Sainsbury's stores. 2
BBC News
27 minutes 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."
