Boy found dead at building site ‘he used as playground’
A MISSING seven-year- old boy was yesterday found dead on a building site that neighbours said he used as a playground.
Conley Thompson is believed to have slipped into a vertical pipe and may have died trying to get out.
The youngster vanished on Sunday evening after leaving a park two miles from his home where he had been with friends.
His body was found around 8.30am the following day on the unsecured site after 50 police officers spent the night searching for him. Police are treating his death as ‘unexplained’ as they await the results of a post-mortem examination.
Last night, Conley’s paternal grandmother Deborah Fraser, 53, said she believed he fell into a large pipe on the site and died.
She added: ‘All I’ve heard at the moment is that he went down a pipe. He apparently got in at the top [of the site] and slid down and went into a vertical pipe, and he must have died trying to get out.’
Forensic teams removed the body from a ditch at the steep construction site in Worsbrough, near Barnsley, South Yorkshire, where developers are digging the foundations for 16 homes.
Although the site is surrounded by a six-foot wooden fence, panels next to a footpath Conley is likely to have used to make his way home were missing and had been loosely covered by boards. Locals said children had been playing there for the past two weeks after security patrols stopped and large gates blocking the site were removed.
Security Guards UK said its contract at the site had run out on July 16 and warnings had previously been issued. Manager Peter Taylor said: ‘We had reported that the perimeter was not secure, there were children trying to come on to the site and [we] were stopping them. We were pulled off immediately without any notice, we then reiterated the issues.’
A woman living nearby who did not want to be named said that Conley had been playing there for ‘about two weeks’.
‘He’s been going a few times with other boys – I’ve seen them playing on the diggers,’ she said.
John Wright, another neighbour, said Conley had played with his children and the news of his death made his ‘blood run cold’.
He said: ‘Police came round last night asking and my kids told them he might be playing at the construction site.
‘He was a lovely lad just like any other his age. He played with all the kids in the area.’
Conley lived with his mother Paula, 29, a former healthcare assistant, in a semi- detached house. Miss Thompson was too devastated to speak and friends said she was ‘beside herself’.
Pensioners Margaret and Melvin Hague, whose garden backs on to the Thompsons’, said Conley was ‘a l ovely l i ttle l ad’ who l oved playing outdoors. Mrs Hague, 75, said: ‘He was a proper boy – he liked to go out and about.’
Detective Inspector Victoria Short, of South Yorkshire Police, said she was ‘deeply saddened’.
Developer Erris Homes did not respond to requests for a comment last night.