Pictured: Man 'beaten to death with rocks' on the Isle of Sheppey as three teenagers are charged with murder
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Daily Mail
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Pub shooting rocks Sydney's inner-west as one person is killed and another left fighting for life
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Daily Mail
40 minutes ago
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Teenage girls are the worst... we don't even bother ringing the police anymore: Desperate workers reveal what life is like on the front line of Britain's shoplifting CRISIS
Kornelia sighs when she recalls how many shoplifters raid her store every month. 'It's every single day. I've stopped bothering calling the police now'. Sadly, the idea of thieves running wild in Britain's conveniences stores and corner shops is no longer hard to believe. Every week videos are posted on social media of thieves brazenly stuffing bags, clothes and pockets full of stolen food, alcohol and other goods. Often in the videos, exasperated shop assistants look on helplessly, while in the minority of clips plucky security guards will try to take them on. In June, Thames Valley's Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber called on members of the public 'stop shoplifters' themselves. But these clips show what happens when people have tried to take on the thieves in the past. In one video posted on social media in 2024 from a Reading Tesco's, a security guard attempts to apprehend a shoplifter who had taken a bag full of stolen goods. But the brave security guard is violently dragged about and put in a headlock, before the thieves fled with the bags. In another video, prolific shoplifter Simon Hawkins, 36, who was jailed last October for 16 months, boldly climbs behind the till of a Co-op store in Reading. The footage, recorded on CCTV last year, shows Hawkins raid the tobacco kiosk and stuff his rucksack with stolen goods before fleeing the scene. Barber said: '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.' Reading, in the heart of the Thames Valley, has some of the highest rates of shoplifting in the country. When the Daily Mail visited the town to speak to locals this week, it is safe to say many did not agree with Mr Barber's comments. For shop assistants like Kornelia, 33, who works at a Polish deli, tackling a shoplifter to 'stop them leaving' is an impossible job. She said: 'There's so many that we couldn't stop them all. 'The police have this attitude... the most they say to us is 'report it on the website, send over the CCTV' - and that's all they do. 'So we've stopped bothering calling now. The responsibility is on our shoulders. Sydney McDonald, 70, claims he was nearly stabbed by a shoplifting when he tried to stop him stealing alcohol 'All we can do is shut the doors before they come in, because we know the faces and even the full names of the regular shoplifters now. 'But the most important thing to the police is just how much they stole in price. They do nothing now, they don't even react.' Security guards and retail workers told the Daily Mail that teenage girls are the biggest offenders. Sarah, a security guard at Primark, said that young girls are the worst offenders. She says that after 5pm, when they leave school, they come in 'dressed up nicely to pretend they're buying stuff'. They then proceed to 'take what they want off the shelves, just grab it and walk off'. When security guards try to stop them, Sarah says they claim they're 'being assaulted' - making it impossible to stop them leaving. 'It's not fair of the police to say that [we should be stopping them]. They need to do something - we can't watch everything, I'm just one person. 'When they steal, we can't do anything but take it off them and tell them not to come back to this store,' Sarah says, exasperated. Another shop owner showed the Daily Mail CCTV footage of two teenage girls who regularly come into his shop and take sweets and drinks. He is scared to touch them to prevent them leaving and doesn't know what to do. Indeed, as he says he encounters shoplifting 'every second of every day', two young boys enter the shop and go to pocket items off the shelf. Shoplifters are so prolific here that a shop owner showing someone CCTV and discussing theft before them is not enough to deter the emboldened teenagers. It's not just an ever increasing loss of profit that shop owners suffer. They also face knife threats from drug addicts and get spat on and racially abused day in, day out. Sydney McDonald, 70, has been a security guard for 25 years, and works at the Sainsbury's on Reading's high street. Sydney said that just 15 minutes earlier, before his shift had even officially started, there was a shoplifting incident. And just last week, he was nearly stabbed by a man after confronting him for stealing alcohol. 'This man had taken four bottles, put them in a basket, and tried to walk out with them. 'I confronted him and he dropped all of the bottles on the floor. He then picked up a shard of glass and tried to stab me. 'I had to grab his arm to stop him from stabbing me.' Sydney is horrified at the police commissioner's calls on the public to intervene. 'It's not the public's job to tackle shoplifters! The public's putting their life at risk. 'The shoplifters, they're not just normal very evil, okay?' As shocking as it might sound, this type of encounter is common to almost every retail worker in Reading. An assistant at Superdrug said that it happens 'every hour' at the store - which is less than it was at JD Williams where she used to work. Cruz Vas, 60, works behind the till at Greggs. He said that shoplifters sometimes queue up outside the doors before he has even opened the store in the morning. Reading, Berkshire has some of the highest rates of shoplifting in the country Vas has also been attacked before, and says he won't intervene physically again. 'Once I tried to stop one man, and he pushed me hard on my chest. I was scared - I nearly got badly hurt. 'He then picked up a load of hot food from the heated shelf and flung it at me.' 'There's so many of them, not just one, that it would be impossible for us to stop them all. And we try to stop them, but they're aggressive', Vas sighs. Most of the shop owners say it is young people who steal the most, running away quickly before they can catch them. Shoplifting in the UK is rising at an unrelenting rate. Figures show that the number of shoplifting offences recorded by police in England and Wales has now passed half a million for the first time. An astonishing 516,971 offences were logged by forces last year, up 20 per cent from 429,873 in 2023. The figure is the highest since current police records began 22 year ago in 2003, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). In June, at a meeting of the Thames Valley police and crime panel, Conservative police and crime commissioner Matthew Barber said that the public should stand up to shoplifters themselves and not rely on bobbies on the beat for help. Mr Barber advised: 'ideally try and stop them leaving, don't just stand there and watch, which a lot of people do, which frustrates me.' He went on to criticise the public for being 'part of the problem' and encouraged shop owners to deal with thieves themselves. Mr Barber also voiced concerns that the UK had become a 'very poor society' with the public simply refusing to involve themselves in tackling crime. He added that he wasn't suggesting everybody 'take it upon themselves to rugby tackle' shoplifters, and store owners should call 999, but that everyone nonetheless should take on the responsibility in their own communities.
Daily Mail
40 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Lucy Letby's barrister admits he talks to nurse 'every week' and says convicted baby killer has 'new hope' as calls grow for case to be reexamined
Child killer Lucy Letby was a 'broken person' but now has a 'new hope', her barrister has said as he revealed they are speaking once every one to two weeks. Mark McDonald said in an interview how Letby's parents contacted almost a year ago and requested he take over from her previous lawyer and free her from prison. 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 a week or 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. Meanwhile the BBC has been forced to correct and re-edit a Panorama programme on Lucy Letby after being accused of 'sloppy and amateurish' journalism and producing 'false statistics'. The documentary repeated discredited claims that when Letby worked as a nurse at Liverpool Women's Hospital between 2012 and 2015, the dislodgement of breathing tubes occurred at a rate 40 times higher than normal during her shifts. The claims had first been aired by Richard Baker KC, who represented the victims' families at the Thirlwall Inquiry, but were heavily contested by Jane Hutton, a professor of statistics at Warwick University, who wrote to the inquiry to express her 'concern at your very poor presentation of statistics relating to accidental dislodgement of endotracheal tubes'. Professor Hutton wrote: 'Your statements implied that an evaluation of shifts shows a substantial increase in events when Letby was on shift. This is a fine example of statistical illiteracy which can mislead juries and the general public.' However, Monday's Panorama, presented by Judith Moritz and Jonathan Coffey, described the figures as 'empirical' and suggested they damaged Letby's claims of innocence. The presenters are this month publishing an updated paperback version of their book, Unmasking Lucy Letby, which partly back-peddles on the original version's presumption of Letby's guilt. After several experts, including Professor Hutton, complained to the BBC about the segment, the corporation has now retracted the figure and edited the version of the programme available on iPlayer.
