Hunt for firework vandals (From Cotswold Journal)

Hunt for firework vandals

4:07pm Tuesday 16th October 2007 in News By Anita Deshmukh

POLICE are hunting firework vandals who blew up postboxes in the villages of Paxford and Charingworth on Monday evening.

In both incidents, the front doors of the postboxes were blown off by the powerful blasts.

The box at Charingworth, near Ebrington, was first to be hit at just before 6pm. Witnesses saw a light grey small 4x4, with a rough-sounding exhaust, and with two people inside, draw up by the box and a lighted firwork was thrown inside.

Just 40 minutes later, some youths in a black hatchback did the same to the box in Paxford. Witnesses said the driver of the car wore a black hat.

Police don't know whether the attacks were vandalism, high jinks before Bonfire Night, or a comment on the recent postal strikes.

Sgt Martin Jones, head of the neighbourhood safer community team, said: "These were very unusual incidents. I can't remember anything like it.

"The reason is a bit of a mystery because we are nearly a month away from Bonfire Night.

"But obviously this is detrimental to the local postal service - it has destroyed the mail in the boxes and has inconvenienced people.

"The boxes are made of metal and pretty strong, so it must have taken very powerful fireworks to blow off the front doors. They could well have caused injury - the people most at risk were those doing the deed as the fireworks could have gone off prematurely in their hands."

Anyone with information is asked to call Crimestoppers on 0800 555111 or Gloucestershire Police on 0845 0901234.

Jaquie Stenson of the Royal Mail said: "Customers who are concerned about mail they may have posted in these boxes can contact our customer services on 08457 740740.

"We deplore mindless acts of vandalism like this and treat any attack on a postbox as very serious indeed. Every item of mail is important to us and we would encourage anyone with information about these incident to contact the police."