A coroner expressed outrage Friday that police did nothing to protect a woman who killed herself and her teenage daughter after years of being tormented by a gang of local youths.Fiona Pilkington, 38, set fire to her parked car on Oct. 24, 2007 while she and her severely disabled daughter, Francecca Hardwick, 18, known as Frankie, sat inside with the family's pet rabbit, an inquest jury heard.
The women's charred remains were found by a truck driver. The bodies were so badly burned that authorities had to use DNA samples to identify them.
Witnesses, including Pilkington's mother, told the inquest in Leicestershire, England, that the single mother and her two children were repeatedly harassed in an ordeal that lasted more than a decade. The witnesses said a gang of "street kids," some as young as 10, tormented the family for simply "existing," The Times of London said.
The gang members threw flour, eggs and stones at the family's home in Barwell, Leicestershire, smashed windows and shouted obscenities, the inquest heard. They shouted at Frankie to lift up her nightgown. They thrust fireworks through the family's letterbox. They urinated against the home's walls. When Frankie tried to go for a walk with her mother, they followed her, imitating her unusual gait.
Pilkington's son, Anthony, who had severe dyslexia, was locked in a shed at knifepoint and beaten with a metal bar, the inquest was told, according to the Daily Mail. Anthony, now 19, was with his grandparents on the night his mother and Frankie died in the fire.
Pilkington, who was a full-time caregiver to her children, called police more than 30 times in the seven years before her death, but no action was taken. At one point, police told Pilkington that she was "overreacting," the inquest heard.
On Friday, the second day of the inquest, Assistant Deputy Coroner Olivia Davison demanded to know why "common sense and basic old-fashioned policing" had not prevailed.
"It seems to me that , given the history and the context of the abuse, it would not have been anti-social behavior but a crime because we had people being hounded in their own house," she said.
Pilkington's mother, Pamela Cassell, 72, said that her daughter had been especially dreading the approach of Halloween, when the local youths upped their harassment of the family.
Pilkington left five letters addressed to family members, the Leicester Mercury said. In one, which was read at the inquest, she said: "11 years of misery, no wonder my hair is coming out. What do to? Take another 11 years of criminal damage and years of abuse? What do I have to do to get my street back to a normal one so people can go out at night?"