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Phil Mills on Bognor tragedy, payback time for local criminal, and Olympian values for schools
It was an anniversary people would have preferred not to have remembered but a similar tragedy brought the terrible events flooding back.
Four-year-old Keira Madden, “a princess” as her father described her, was found dead at her home in Felpham, Bognor, at the same time her mother Cathy, 40, fell to her death from Seven Sisters cliffs near Birling Gap, not far from Beachy Head.
And it was at Beachy Head, the scene of so many awful tragedies, that Neil Puttick, 34, and his Japanese wife Kazumi, 44, were found dead just over a year ago.
The devastated parents took their own lives three days after their five-year-old disabled son Samuel had died from meningitis. They couldn’t live without him.
Spare a thought for their families, and the police officers assigned to breaking the dreadful news to them.
Spare a well-done, too, to the finance cops whose work resulted in a drug dealer coughing up £45,000.
Trevor Dawes, 48, (pictured) from Moulsecoomb, Brighton, had already started his five year sentence and now Judge Niblett at Hove Crown Court declared that Dawes had benefited from his general criminal conduct to the tune of over £200,000, and ordered him to pay a confiscation order £45,700 within six months.
Detective Chief Inspector Ian Pollard said; “If Dawes fails to pay the confiscation order, he will face a further term of imprisonment of 18 months. This ensures that he will have to pay back the profits of his criminal lifestyle. The money recovered from criminals like him will be redistributed back into the criminal justice system and also to community projects as part of the national ‘Community Payback’ Scheme.”
Another anniversary slipped by as sunbathers flocked to the beaches of Sussex. It was 70 years ago this month that 40 miles of seafront from Brighton to Selsey were closed off for the duration of the war in case of a Nazi invasion.
Hundreds of locals dived into the sea for a last swim just before the order came into effect. Latest 7 reader Lawrence Nettles remembered: “I was only a boy and I thought it was all very exciting – little did I know.” Do you remember? Email comment@thelatest.co.uk
Defences littered the beaches and proms in Brighton and Hove where today workmen are giving the railings a lick of paint.
Offenders working through Surrey & Sussex Probation Trust’s Community Payback scheme are toiling between the piers, going over the area painted last year to touch up rust spots caused by winter weather, and then work eastwards from the Sea Life Centre towards Kemp Town. The second phase will complement the painting carried out by hoteliers last year and fill in any gaps.
The operation will involve 88 people, including council staff, working for 748 hours. It’s good to see those with a debt to society paying the price.
Brighton & Hove’s Primary Languages and International Project has been granted the Inspire Mark by LOCOG, recognising innovative projects inspired by 2012, which promote the Olympic values of cooperation, international friendship and understanding.
Schools throughout the city are involed. Fairlight Primary School, for example, is focusing on Uruguay. Albion’s Uruguayan manager Gus Poyet has visited the school and answered pupils’ questions about his home country, as well as about football. Coombe Road Primary School has sent a basket of English objects for pupils in Madagascar. Who says the Olympics are just about sport?
