Which news stories have stuck with you?

[PepperSteaks]

When I was a little girl there was a story in the news that I vaguely remember about a little girl standing on the Christmas tree lights barefoot and dying. I can picture what I thought the girl looked like so clearly all these years later and think about it often.
Do you have any news stories that you still think about?

Another local one for me the murder of Angelika Kluk by Peter Tobin.

Dunblane is the first news story I remember. I was 5 or 6 and my class wrote letters and drew pictures to send to the school.

I was glued to the coverage of the Chilean miners rescue

Boxing day tsunami - I didn't realise the scale of the disaster at the time

Sarah Harper, I was the same age and we shared the same name.

It was the first time I realised that bad things could happen to little girls.

There were two young girls went missing from east Scotland (Caroline Hogg and Susan Maxwell) and I was ten or eleven and remember seeing the missing posters in Asda for Caroline and we were in a department store when it came on the radio that they’d found Susan’s body and I remember my mum and Auntie being really upset. Poor girls, I’ve never forgotten them.

Sara Payne. I don't know why her story (above all the other horrors that I've heard in my 50 years) stuck. Her brothers and her mother and father's devastation. And the unspeakable horror of a human who modified his van in order to do this to a child. Maybe that planning was the sticking point. All of it really. Poor Sara and her poor, poor family.

Thanks Ginger - it wasn't much fun (as she wasn't family, it wasn't obvious that she was someone who might have warranted being told before finding out). And it doesn't help that various legal reasons mean it has popped up in the news at later dates.

The murder of Laura Donnelly in Paisley. A family friend knew her. I didn't but I remember hearing about it when it happened from said friend and I think of her at times.

I'm trying to remember some more positive news stories and I'm struggling. Why is it so much easier to remember the terrible ones?

James Bulger.

It was around this time of year 4 years ago.
My LO was only a few months old and a lady the same age as me disappeared from a local hospital in freezing weather with her newborn daughter a few days after giving birth. There were city wide searches for her, as she was barely dressed, in nightwear and slippers iirc and the baby was just in a blanket in near freezing temperatures.
They were both found a couple of days after on some rocks where she had jumped from a cliff near the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
I think it just rang true for me with the locality and the fact she was my age with a tiny newborn like me.
Stays with me every Christmas.
So so sad for the woman’s mental health and the lives lost that night.

Aberfan
The 10 Day War
Maria Colwell
Moorgate crash
First man on the moon
The photo of a little girl running and burning having been hit by a nepalm bomb
Famines in Biafra

Madeline McCann
Baby P
Amanda Fox trial
Not on UK news but murder of Jordie Hudson
9/11

Many more I should think

A jack russell that bred with a Rottweiler. They showed pictures of the puppies they were mad looking

I read the transcript of a conversation between a call handler and a 14 year old trapped in Grenfell tower and the call lasted until she died and also another child who called their mum and asked them to come and get them.

I wish I'd never read either story.

Dunblane and Lockerbie

Also the disappearance of Vicky Hamilton, who had gone for a bus. Recently found her body and it was that bastard Peter Tobin who murdered her.

I also remember a boy, in Clarkston, who was chased by some other boys, and hacked to death with a machete. The trial was over the summer holidays and I remember being morbidly fascinated. He was a first year dental student and I wish I could remember his name, but I don't forget his murder.

The first gulf war, I was asleep in bed and heard my dad listening to the radio and the invasion being announced.

The clearing of the mass graves in the Balkans. I have a friend who was one of the truck drivers and the things he saw there broke him.

9 11

Jaimie Bulger

The deaths at deepcut barracks.

Aberfan and the fact that it wasn’t a tragic accident, it was negligence.
James Bulger,
Victoria Climbe
Dr Marietta Higgs and the Satanic ritual abuse stories that resulted in many children being forcibly removed from their parents

The child that fell into a volcano in Italy because he was too close and the fumes made him pass out. Same happened to the parents as they were trying to rescue him.

Such a bizarre, horrible thing to happen.

Just seen glenthebattleostrich’s post

All the deaths at Deepcut.
Dr David Kelly

Pretty much the same as MrsMartinRohde plus Peter Sutcliffe and 'The Fox', Chernobyl and Marie WIlks.

Baby P. I think about him most days, my heart breaks for what he went through and I'm so angry at all the incompetent bastards who had chances to help him but didn't. I hope Steven Barker, Jason Owen and Tracey Connelly rot in hell.

Ben Needham
James Bulger
Lee Rigby
Dumblane
Josie Russell and her mum and sister
9/11

Also Shannon Matthews

I once read a news story about a woman who had come home from work, a night shift I think, and found her husband and little daughter both dead in the bathroom, her husband had been brushing the little girl's teeth and had a heart attack, and fallen on top of the girl killing her. Just horrendous.

Also there was a spate of plane incidents a few years ago including Malaysia airways, the flight that was shot down by Russians, and the German flight where the pilot deliberately crashed, looking at the news footage with the faces of so many lost people really affected me.

James Bulger, It kept me up at night for weeks. My heart ached for his mother, even though I was a selfish teen at the time.
Watching the second plane going into the tower on 9/11 and seeing the presenters disbelief and thinking Christ here comes another world war.