Agencies ‘not to blame’ for teens killed by incest pair
A GREEN-FINGERED dad grins as he holds the 3kg pumpkin-sized tomato he grew in just over two months.
Douglas Smith, 42, fostered his record-breaker from the seeds of a 3.4kg tomato he got from the US.
He explained: “The tomato is made up six tomato plants fused together. Towards the end I had to hang the tomato in a sling made out
Douglas’ son lifts it up of a pair of tights I bought to keep it falling off the stem.”
With a 27.5in circumference, his tomato is bigger than a football and around the size of a small waist.
It smashes Peter Glazebrook’s UK record of a 2.9kg tomato from 2019.
During lockdown, the product manager from Stanstead Abbotts, Herts, also grew a 20-ft sunflower.
Fruit is measured
GUILTY Barrass & Machin
SUPPORT agencies have been cleared over the death of two teens killed by their mother and her half brother who were in an incestuous relationship
Sarah Barrass, 35, who also plotted to kill her other four children, was seen as “loving, caring and competent” a report into the tragedy concluded.
She and Brandon Machin, 39, father of all the children, were both jailed for life for strangling Tristan, 13, and Blake, 14, at their home in Shiregreen, Sheffield.
The trial heard the outside world saw “a household of a loving single mum with six children, heavily supported by her brother”. But Barrass was “terrified she was raising monsters” and feared social services would take the children from her.
The report for Sheffield Children’s Safeguarding Partnership took evidence from 14 agencies involved with the family and found there was no evidence to predict the 2019 murders.
But it noted “a lack of professional curiosity when it came to the father of the children and the support available”.