Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
OAP on slow 4-wheel bike causes chaos
Bus driver wears stab vest to work
AN elderly rider pedalling a four-wheeled bicycle with a makeshift fibreglass cab caused a big tailback on a major road.
The contraption, which also had a wonky rear wheel, struggled to go uphill, said police.
Some drivers told of near-misses with the slowmoving bike in heavy rushhour traffic.
PC Nigel Keates pulled over the rider, who had a long white beard, on the A56 between Colne, Lancs, and Skipton, North Yorks.
He said: “It’s not often you’re stuck behind one of these. More than a few angry motorists. The rider was spoken to.”
But some drivers blasted police on Facebook for stopping the rider. Jason Miles wrote: “Go and catch some real criminals.” A BODYBUILDING bus driver fears for his life after years of stalking by an obsessed teenage girl.
Former bouncer Imre Marton – who is 5ft 8in and 15st 10lb – wears a stab vest to work after Charlie Howells told him: “We need to die together.”
The nightmare began when Howells saw Imre from a bus stop when she was 18.
Howells began to ride on his bus for hours asking him for dates. When he refused, she returned time and again, crying and shaking on the bus.
After 12 months, police issued a harassment warning. It gave Imre’s full name, which she did not previously have. Howells traced him on Facebook, got his mobile number from a friend, and bombarded him with messages every day.
Later, an officer left papers in front of her with Imre’s Oxford address.
That blunder made things even worse. She would stand opposite his house, watch his every move and vandalise his car. Imre’s girlfriend left him and he lost hundreds of pounds per week through changing his shifts at work.
She found his bus and screamed “How can you do this to us?” in front of passengers. Imre, 32, sought help from Paladin, the National Stalking Advocacy Service which is campaigning with the Mirror for a Stalkers Register to protect the one million victims in Britain every year.
Howells spent six weeks in prison in 2014 for breaching the harassment order. On release, it simply started all over again.
She warned she would “make him ugly”, an apparent reference to an acid attack – then leapt out to throw water over him. “It was a nightmare every single day,” said Imre.
“No one knows where I live now. My curtains are always closed, I don’t talk to neighbours. I go home late at night, but park somewhere else far away.” Howells, 22, of Wantage, Oxon, was freed in August from a twoyear jail sentence, but the messages have started again. Imre is considering emigrating “to start a normal life”.
Stalkers is on BBC1, at 10.45pm, Monday, November 20.