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Singer blames housing crisis for homelessness
The S Club 7 star Hannah Spearritt has revealed that she was left “homeless” due to the UK housing crisis. The singer and actor, who had chart-topping success with the pop group from 1998 to 2003, had to sleep in a friend’s office with her partner, personal trainer Adam Thomas, and their two young children at Christmas. Spearritt, 41, said they had no choice but to move after a landlord, who had given them two months to leave their
rented home in southwest London, brought the move date forward. The decision left them with two days to find a new place and, after finding a short-term rental, that property’s landlord asked them to pay £6,000 up front, which Spearritt called “crazy extortionate”.
“Our landlord needed the money and the property sold so fast. We ended up with under two days to leave. What screwed us is we didn’t have time to find another place,” she said. Of her S Club fame, she told The Sun: “People think we must all be millionaires but sadly it’s just not true. It was what it was and we enjoyed ourselves at the time.”
Police arrest teenager who shot himself in the foot
A teenager shot himself in the foot and told doctors he was a victim, a court heard. The 17-year-old turned up at hospital with a gunshot injury to his foot, claiming he had been shot. But CCTV showed he had accidentally discharged the gun while trying to hide it in his waistband. Police officers didn’t believe his story due to the nature of his injury. Witnesses and CCTV identified he had accidentally shot himself in the foot in Brentford, west London, on 11 March last year. The teen was sentenced to a 12-month referral order at Kingston Crown Court on Friday.
He had pleaded guilty at the same court last month to being in possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence. An investigation found another teenager, Tyrese Campbell, was with him at the time of the accident and took the firearm away with him. Campbell, 19, of Hounslow, west London, was sentenced to 14 months in jail after pleading guilty to carrying a firearm in a public place at the same court last month.
Boy arrested after girl, 15, stabbed to death
A teenage boy has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a 15-year-old girl was stabbed to death in Northumberland. Northumbria Police was called shortly after 5.10pm on Friday to
a report of a teenage boy and girl injured in the Priestpopple area of Hexham. Emergency services attended where the boy and girl – aged 16 and 15 respectively – suffered serious injuries “consistent with having been caused by a bladed article”. They were both taken to hospital, where the girl died later that evening while the boy suffered serious, non-life-threatening injuries.
Man killed by group with weapons in Walsall
A murder investigation has been launched after a man was killed in an attack in Walsall town centre early yesterday morning. The victim, aged in his twenties, was set upon by a group of men believed to be armed with weapons just after 0120. He was taken to hospital but was pronounced dead just before 0300.
Det Insp Laura Harrison, leading the investigation, said: “It’s very early in the investigation, but this appears to be a targeted and vicious attack involving a group of men carrying weapons.” The force issued a section 60 notice for the town centre, meaning officers have greater powers to stop and search people they suspect might be carrying a weapon.
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