Firm flees youth gang after site shootings
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▪ by Pete Swingler A West Midlands haulier is planning to leave the area after two of its drivers were shot within a fortnight.
Dorothy Ward, spokesman for T&P Services of Bilston, near Wolverhampton, says moving is the only way to protect its drivers.
Driver Thomas Middleton was shot last week with an air pistol while he was at the firm's Loxdale Sidings site. The pellet did not penetrate his skin but he was left bruised and so shaken by the incident that he handed in his resignation.
Middleton says: "I was standing in the warehouse when I felt a sharp pain in my stomach. I knew what it was because another driver had been shot by an air pellet at the same place only two weeks before."
That driver, Lee Smith, was hit in the leg with a pellet. lie was not seriously hurt but is also considering leaving the company.
Ward says that since the firm moved to Bilston from another part of the Midlands last October, youths from a nearby housing estate have targeted the premises.
So far 17 incidents of vandalism, arson and theft have been reported to the police—the situation is so bad that some of the drivers no longer want to work for the company.
"I dread to think how much all the trouble has cost us," she adds. "With the two shooting incidents we have decided enough is enough. We have told our landlord that we are pulling out and at present we are looking for suitable alternative premises."
A Walsall police spokesman says that the incidents are being investigated.