Crime rate sky high in UK's 'forgotten town' with barely any police
12.02.2022 - 15:51
/ dailyrecord.co.uk
Tim North was simply watching television in his living room when police officers knocked on his door.
They informed him that his son Kevin was badly injured and that he should go to hospital to see him as soon as possible.
Craig, or Noggo as he was known in his hometown of Tilbury, Essex, had been discovered bleeding out on the pavement nearby to his family home, The Mirror writes.
There was very little that medics could do to save him.
Three days later Craig's dad, who had been barred from being in the room with his son due to Covid-19 restrictions up until that point, switched off his life-support machine.
Tim said a post-mortem examination found Craig, a dad-of-three, had deep knife wounds in his back that had ripped through several of his organs.
Darnel Curtin, 19, of nearby Chesterton Way, was charged with murder and possession of an offensive weapon.
As the upcoming court case rolls on for what will likely be months, Tim and his family have been left to grieve in a town he’s seen change dramatically over the past five decades.
“There used to be fights when we’d go out to the pub, but you’d just get hit in the face and that’d be it," Tim told The Mirror, while washing his car outside the home where he was born.
“The area is a problem. It’s a bad old place now. Round here, there’s a lot of trouble.”
As much as you might expect a man who’s just lost his son to see the worst of the town where he died, the statistics suggest that Tilbury is a place that’s struggling.
It tops the charts as Essex’s most dangerous small town.
Residents are twice as likely to be burgled, robbed or violently attacked than the average person in the county, while sexual assault and rape reports are a third higher.
Talk to people in the town, which has