WE HAVE been crunching the numbers to find this year’s best-read stories, and it seems people in Kidderminster, Stourport, and Bewdley are keen to find out about crime in their area.
All but one of this year’s top ten best-read stories on the Kidderminster Standard website have been blue light stories.
This year’s most-read story came in November, after posts on social media claimed Stourport High School had gone into lockdown because of an ‘intruder entering the building’.
Other posts described seeing ‘police everywhere’, while another added ‘pupils were locked in classrooms, hiding under desks’.
But police moved to clarify the situation, revealing the school had received an anonymous phone call that had caused them concern, but that the phone call had been identified as malicious communication with no threat or risk to pupils and staff at the school.
In September, thousands of you read the shocking story of Gary Oakes, of Trimpley Lane, Bewdley, who was jailed for 12 years for sexually assaulting a girl under the age of 13 and breaching a sexual harm prevention order.
The sentence followed a trial where he was found guilty of eight counts of sexual assault of a female child under 13 and two counts of causing/inciting a girl under 13 to engage in sexual activity with no penetration.
Oakes, who abused his victim over a three-year period from August 2015 to August 2018, also breached of a sexual harm prevention order.
He was sentenced at Worcester Crown Court after previously pleading guilty to causing death by dangerous driving, causing serious injury by dangerous driving, and drug-driving.
The charges relate to the death of three-week-old Harley Wilkinson.
June’s best-read story saw a county lines drug dealer from Kidderminster who kept an illegal gun at an address he was selling crack and heroin jailed for eight years.
Zach Pearson, 19, formerly of Washington Street, was found guilty of possession with intent to supply a Class A drug – crack cocaine, possession with intent to supply a Class A drug – heroin, possession of an illegal firearm and possession of prohibited ammunition.
A very sad story in March saw a man in his 60s die after a two-car crash on the A456 Birmingham Road in Blakedown.
In March, the RSPCA removed 90 horses and two dogs from a farm in Bewdley.
The animal charity was called in by West Mercia Police, who received concerns for animal welfare at a site in Northwood Lane.
Following reports, officers attended the farm on Wednesday, and the 90 horses were removed.
Another very sad incident happened in May, when a woman died after an altercation outside the Lidl supermarket in Stourport.
In January, a Stourport man who tried to facilitate sexual activity with a child was sentenced to 32 months in prison and handed a lifetime sexual harm prevention order (SHPO).
Julian Davis, 62, was arrested on December 4 last year following an operation by officers from West Mercia Police’s Online Child Sexual Exploitation Team (OCSET).
Readers were keen to find out about speed checks on roads in Stourport and Kidderminster in April, where 71 motorists were clocked as going above the limit.
Officers were out with their speed guns on Minster Road, north of Stourport, and on the A448 Bromsgrove Road in Kidderminster.
But we end with a very positive story, published in August, which saw a nine-year-old boy from Kidderminster not only taken a GCSE maths exam but achieved a grade 9 – the highest possible mark.
Lezhi Xie (known as Timmy) attends Foley Park Primary Academy, part of the Victoria Academies Trust.
