Three arrested as police probe Sheffield vehicle 'chop shop'
Det Sgt Thomas Jordan, from South Yorkshire Police, said: "So-called chop shops form part of much wider organised criminality and often involve cars being stolen on order to be stripped of their parts and sold on for cash."We know there is a direct link between this organised criminality and burglaries, and that is why we are appealing for information to help us shut down this harmful trade in Sheffield and across South Yorkshire."
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The Independent
22 minutes ago
- The Independent
Lucy Connolly to speak out for first time since being released from prison
Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for stirring up racial hatred against asylum seekers online on the day of the Southport murders, is expected to speak out on Friday for the first time since being released from prison. The 42-year-old, wife of Conservative councillor Raymond Connolly, left HMP Peterborough on Thursday morning and it is understood she will be doing limited media interviews a day after walking free. She spent time with her husband, daughter and parents on the day of her release and was pictured walking her dogs in the evening, the Daily Mail reported. Ms Connolly was handed a 31-month sentence after she posted on X: 'Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care … if that makes me racist so be it.' She pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred by publishing and distributing 'threatening or abusive' written material on X and was jailed at Birmingham Crown Court in October last year. The former childminder, from Northampton, was ordered to serve 40% of her sentence in prison before being released on licence. It is understood that Ms Connolly was a passenger in a white taxi which left HMP Peterborough via the vehicle airlock, a set of two gates exiting the prison, shortly after 10am on Thursday. Her case has sparked debate, with some criticising her sentence as excessive. Reacting to her release, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Connolly's sentence was 'harsher than the sentences handed down for bricks thrown at police or actual rioting'. In a post on X, Ms Badenoch compared Ms Connolly's case with that of Ricky Jones, a suspended Labour councillor who was found not guilty of encouraging violent disorder at an anti-racism rally in the wake of the Southport murders. Writing on X, Mrs Badenoch said: 'Juries are a cornerstone of justice, but we shouldn't have to rely on them to protect basic freedoms. 'Protecting people from words should not be given greater weight in law than public safety. If the law does this, then the law itself is broken – and it's time Parliament looked again at the Public Order Act.' Reform UK leader Nigel Farage described Ms Connolly's case as a 'symbol of Keir Starmer's authoritarian, broken, two-tier Britain'. A bid to challenge her sentence at the Court of Appeal was dismissed in May, which was described by Mr Connolly as 'shocking and unfair'. The Northampton town councillor, and former West Northamptonshire district councillor, said his wife had 'paid a very high price for making a mistake'. But Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer defended it earlier this year. He was asked in May about Ms Connolly's case after her Court of Appeal application against her jail term was dismissed. Asked during Prime Minister's Questions whether her imprisonment was an 'efficient or fair use' of prison, Sir Keir said: 'Sentencing is a matter for our courts and I celebrate the fact that we have independent courts in this country. 'I am strongly in favour of free speech, we've had free speech in this country for a very long time and we protect it fiercely. 'But I am equally against incitement to violence against other people. I will always support the action taken by our police and courts to keep our streets and people safe.' Ms Connolly was arrested on August 6, by which point she had deleted her social media account, but other messages which included further racist remarks were uncovered by officers who seized her phone. The post was viewed 310,000 times in three and a half hours before she deleted it.
The Guardian
23 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Teenager who planned mosque attack in Scotland detained for 10 years
A teenager who listed Hitler, Mussolini and the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik as his inspirations and who planned a terrorist attack on a mosque has been sentenced to 10 years in custody. The 17-year-old, who cannot be named because of his age, had intended to set fire to an Islamic centre in Greenock, Inverclyde, after befriending the imam and mapping out the building's interior on his phone. The teenager was arrested at the door of the centre in January this year. He was carrying a military-style rucksack that contained a German-manufactured Glock-type air pistol, ammunition, ball bearings, gas cartridges and aerosol cans, according to prosecutors. He was sentenced at the high court in Glasgow on Thursday after pleading guilty to two terrorism charges, with a further eight years of supervision on licence upon release. In his sentencing statement, Lord Arthurson said: 'What you had in mind was what can properly be characterised as a quite diabolical atrocity involving extreme violence and multiple deaths. You even requested that your attack be livestreamed. Your conduct was only stopped by your arrest, when you were quite literally at the very door of the centre.' Prosecutors said the teenager, who became radicalised online, began plotting the attack in December 2024 and joined the mosque's WhatsApp group saying he was 'looking for guidance', later winning the trust of the imam during several visits. Meanwhile he was boasting of his plans to set the centre on fire on the social media platform Telegram and later filmed himself wandering the corridors, including footage showing him superimposing a hand carrying a semi-automatic pistol. Sineidin Corrins, deputy procurator fiscal for specialist casework at the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, said: 'This heinous plan to attack those within his own local community was prepared and driven by racial and religiously motivated hatred, and showed that he not only held neo-Nazi beliefs but was about to act on them to cause pain and suffering'.
Daily Mail
35 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Lucy Connolly's jail torment revealed: Truth about the middle-class mother's 377 days in prison - and how one officer said she was the most petrified inmate they'd ever seen
Not long ago, Lucy Connolly found herself being manhandled by up to six prison officers on the wing of HMP Peterborough that has been her home in recent months. Roughly handcuffed, she was bundled to another wing housing violent inmates and treated so forcefully that she was left in agony. Several days later, her wrists were still bruised. Lucy's ' crime '? On this occasion it was to object to being moved to a new cell in an area of the prison known as 'The Bronx', so called because it houses the most troublesome inmates – the violent, aggressive and difficult ones. Lucy Connolly, a childminder, had been none of these things during her months behind bars. Or indeed in civilian life. But then as we now know, this was not the first time that vastly disproportionate measures were alleged to have been taken against the 42-year-old wife and mother, who found herself placed at His Majesty's Pleasure last October. Faced with a 31-month stretch for posting a deeply unpleasant tweet, which she quickly regretted and deleted, Lucy's incarceration finally came to an end yesterday after nine agonising months behind bars. But as the MP and deputy Reform leader Richard Tice, who recently visited Connolly in prison, told the Daily Mail, she faces further challenging times ahead as she readjusts to life on the outside. 'I know that her main priority will be spending time with her family – that has kept her going. But at the same time her freedom will be a significant readjustment, not in the least because the things that are meant to help prisoners with that adjustment, such as day release, were denied to her,' he says. 'It is wonderful news that she is no longer behind bars, but the horrendous trauma that has been inflicted on the whole family will take time to heal.' Indeed. Legal bills and the loss of Lucy's childminding income have left her husband Ray, a former Conservative councillor, in thousands of pounds of debt, while their 13-year-old daughter Holly has struggled so much with her mother's absence and the dreadful, public circumstances behind it, that this previously bright and diligent schoolgirl has been suspended from school more than once in recent months. She has recently been living with her grandmother, Lucy's mum Heather, and other female relatives, as the family attempted to generate extra female support. 'I don't think you have to think about what happened to Lucy for very long to know that what happened has been incredibly hard for everyone,' says Richard Tice. Hard, and arguably deeply unfair. Today, so infamous is her name that the circumstances behind Lucy Connolly's incarceration barely need rehearsing. In the hours after killer Axel Rudakubana murdered three young girls and attempted to murder ten others at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29, 2024 – sparking nationwide unrest – Lucy posted a tweet in which she called for mass deportation of migrants and wrote that people could 'set fire' to hotels housing the 'b***ards' for all she cared. She deleted the tweet within hours, but sensed something was afoot after receiving a torrent of messages referring to what she had written. Her husband later revealed that she had said the tweet had 'come back to haunt me'. Yet neither could surely imagine to what extent: arrested at home by uniformed police officers on August 6, she was charged with inciting racial hatred and was handed a 31-month sentence in October after pleading guilty to the offence at Birmingham Crown Court. What has been less well documented is how Lucy and her family have navigated her time behind bars. Although when the Mail visited the pleasant semi-detached family home in Northamptonshire yesterday, ahead of Lucy's release, Ray told us his wife had coped with imprisonment 'relatively well', in truth the whole family have endured months of emotional turmoil, particularly their daughter Holly. Twelve when her mum was arrested – she had to celebrate her 13th birthday without her – she has missed her terribly. 'She has found it very difficult not having her mum at home,' as Ray put it yesterday. Her mother, in turn, has had to navigate all manner of emotional onslaughts throughout the course of her imprisonment, not in the least the hammer blow of her appeal being overturned in May, along with countless rejected requests for day release – something to which she has been entitled since last November, but which have never been granted. But then as we shall see, Lucy's time in prison seems to have been characterised by obfuscation, double standards and, on occasion, downright lies. Initially sent on remand to HMP Peterborough, a fragile and frightened Lucy arrived in prison with a 'reputation' already formed, said her husband. A couple of the officers subsequently told her that they'd been warned by the authorities to 'watch out' for her because she could be violent. Lucy had to inform them she had never had a fight in her life. She had only just settled into Peterborough when she was transferred to Drake Hall in Staffordshire, increasing the time it took for visitors to make the trip from her home town in Northampton from two hours to three. Nonetheless, nearly every Sunday – family day in the prison calendar – Ray and Holly would dutifully make the trip, alongside other relatives and family friends. Notably, also among her visitors, the Mail understands, were the parents of children in Lucy's care – past and present – some of whom were from immigrant backgrounds and many of whom wrote character references to the sentencing judge pleading for leniency. Even with the unwavering love from her family however – and the groundswell of support from many members of the public – one can only imagine how desperately frightened this previously law-abiding citizen must have been in those early days, mingling with drug dealers, thieves and murderers. One anonymous officer at Peterborough reported that he had never seen anyone look so petrified on arrival. In fact, despite her own and her family's fears, Lucy settled into prison life reasonably well. After initial suspicion about her perceived 'poshness' and marriage to a Conservative councillor, Lucy became something of a mother figure to many of the damaged women she was housed alongside. Many would sit in her cell for hours, chatting and putting the world to rights, while Ray subsequently revealed that his wife had asked him to send extra money to give to some of the needier inmates, many of whom were homeless. 'Lucy got on great with some of the most difficult prisoners,' he told one journalist. 'There was this strong, scary, very attractive, powerful Jamaican girl and she was really kicking off with the prison officers, and they didn't know what to do, and Lucy went over, sort of grabbed her and gave her a big cuddle. The officers said, '"What's wrong with her?", and Lucy said, "She wants her mum".' Tellingly, when other inmates asked Lucy what she was in for, her response that it was a post on social media bamboozled them. 'They cracked up, is the correct reaction, I think,' Ray revealed. Even so, Lucy has undeniably been through difficult times while inside, not least because despite repeated requests and well-argued letters to the governor, prison authorities repeatedly denied her temporary leave – known as ROTL, or Release on Temporary Licence. Among the reasons cited for depriving her of the chance to enjoy normal conditions leading up to release was 'media interest'. Desperate for answers, when her mother Heather asked the Home Office why her daughter wasn't getting the leave to which she was entitled, the reply came back that she 'hadn't been assessed yet'. The most brutal setback came in May, however, when the Court of Appeal overturned her request to shorten her sentence. The decision, said Ray, left her 'heartbroken'. Holly was also devastated: having excitedly prepared for her mother's early return, she was told instead she would have to wait another three months. 'We're a good little team but this has knocked my daughter a little bit. She's got bad anxiety,' Ray told Talk television in the aftermath of the news. By June, at least, Lucy had been moved closer to home, having been moved back to HMP Peterborough. She was placed on the induction unit until a space became available on the enhanced wing where, as a prisoner of good character, she would receive better accommodation and her own television. Which brings us to what Richard Tice calls the 'shocking assault' on Lucy just over two months ago. Having been led to believe a room had become free on the enhanced wing, Lucy was instead told by an officer that she was being placed on A1, a wing known as 'The Bronx' due to its frequent chaotic scenes. After politely telling officers she would not go, she says she was subsequently set upon by a group or five or six officers using restraining methods that are meant to be reserved for violent or abusive prisoners. She was bent forwards, her arms bent sharply back, and her hands tightly handcuffed, leaving her in what she later described to Ray as 'excruciating pain,' before being manhandled up three flights of stairs and dumped in a filthy cell. She was then told she was on 23 hour lockdown for 14 days on what is known as 'Basics' – meaning no TV, no privilege, and food being brought to her cell. Richard Tice visited Lucy in the wake of this experience, and said he was deeply impressed by her forbearance. 'I saw Lucy in the wake of what had been fundamentally a shocking assault undertaken on her by prison officers who were clearly playing games with her,' he said. 'She was coping not only with this, but with adapting to prison life, also to the news of her appeal being rejected, but she did so with enormous equanimity although she was clearly very upset.' Having complained to the prison about her treatment and requested an investigation, Richard says he has been met with silence. 'They did not give me the courtesy of a reply which I am hugely disappointed by; I wonder if that means they cleared the officers involved of any wrongdoing,' he told the Mail. Meanwhile life on the outside has not been easy for Ray. As well as trying to parent a daughter experiencing all the trials and tribulations of adolescence without a guiding maternal hand, he has also had to navigate a number of personal brickbats of his own. A hugely popular Conservative councillor at West Northamptonshire Council, his public loyalty to his wife – he appeared on television saying she was a 'good person and not a racist' – led to 13 anonymous complaints about his 'behaviour' to the council which were referred to a London law firm to investigate. The Labour MP for Northampton South Mike Reader also called for his resignation in a statement referring to 'high standards in public discourse'. 'As [councillor] Connolly repeatedly defended the comments made, I hope he will now do the right thing and resign from West Northamptonshire Council,' Mr Reader said. In the event Ray Connolly did not resign, although he went on to lose his seat following elections in May. He remains on the town council. Arguably, he has more to worry about than his career: alongside his own health issues – he has a compromised immune system because of bone marrow issues – the family have faced enormous financial problems. Earlier this year Ray was forced to sell the family car, alongside other possessions, to pay his wife's legal fees, and at one point was facing the prospect of losing the family home. His circumstances have been eased by the creation of a JustGiving page – set up by supporters – which to date has raised nearly £160,000. The Mail understands that Ray has received £60,000 of this so far to help settle his debts. Let us not forget either that both Ray and Lucy continue to endure the almost unfathomable loss of a child, after their toddler son Harry died in 2011 as a result of gross medical negligence. It says much about the strain Lucy's imprisonment has placed him under that two months ago, in the wake of his wife's move to 'The Bronx', Ray was reduced to tears for the first time since Harry's death. Unable to cry since the loss, he confided to friends that he had wept after hearing Lucy sobbing uncontrollably down the phone. Finally husband, wife and daughter are now reunited under one roof for the first time in nine months. When asked about their plans yesterday, Ray responded only that their focus was 'to get our lives back on track'.
