PLIGHT OF BROKEN FAMILIES HITS HOME

SHOCK, horror, anger, confusion and grief rocked Townsville when four teens were killed on Bayswater Rd in the early hours of June 7, 2020.

The questions started immediately: How did this happen? How, after months of community cries for something to be done about the youth crime crisis, did this tragedy occur?

Twelve months on and Townsville’s residents are still crying out for a solution to the problem.

On Saturday a single mother filmed youths in her driveway as they took her car.

A stolen car was set alight at the golf club on Friday morning, taken from a Pallarenda address.

Two stolen vehicles were stopped overnight on Friday by police deploying stingers.

The cases of stolen vehicles town continue to mount.

The politicians don’t seem to have any answers.

On the flip side of that are families broken by the situation they find themselves in.

Lucius Hure-hill was one of the four teenagers killed in that accident.

His grandmother Sanaa Liddle has spoken publicly for the first time about the tragedy and how she feels about it.

She says he was born into a broken family situation and by the time he came to live with her the damage was done.

“He was let down time and time again by the failure and disappointment of his parents.

“What I’d teach him would be undone within five minutes of him being around them.

“All he wanted was to be a family.” Ms Liddle said she raised him not to be involved in crime, to have more respect for himself, but his desire to be around teens who understood him was irresistible.

“He was heartbroken. I think he liked being around kids that came from the same broken homes and who were also hurting.

“He must have felt a connection there.”

Her words serve to highlight that the current property crime problem is about more than stolen cars and break and enters – it’s also about families that are broken. in