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?

I find Grenfell very hard to think about. Those poor people trusting those in authority that the fire would be extinguished and that they would be rescued. Then the later realisation that there is no way out. And for all the poor people outside the building as well to be witnessing what was going on.

9-11 too. Being trapped in a burning high rise has got to be one of the most terrifying things

I remember watching a special report while up one night with a crying newborn DD about the plight of would be immigrants trying to get to mainland Europe. During the course of the report an official mentioned in passing how a mother was on the boat with a young baby who wouldn’t stop crying despite her mum desperately trying to calm her down. Frightened they’d be discovered by the authorities, the other refugees grabbed the baby and threw her overboard. The mother leapt after her to try and save her and they both drowned. It’s stayed with me for years as much for how matter-of-factly it was mentioned as the horror of the story.

I was in my early teens when the Miami showband were murdered in Northern lreland. I had thought they were cool and was totally horrified by what happened. I went over and over it again in my mind for a long time. I live in the Republic.
Today stories of young people abroad getting killed or going missing or dying in some sort of accident always make me cry as my dc are that age and l feel so much for the parents

The abduction and murder of Caroline Hogg, she was the same age as my little brother and felt so close to home as we were frequent visitors to Portobello beach where she was abducted from as kids.

I remember my mum sitting by the open fire toasting bread and weeping over the Aberfan tragedy. She kept saying those poor children.
Hillsborough as we had relatives at the match, and as Forest fans were listening to the radio as it all unfolded.

A positive one. The 50 mums and their children who recorded the video for 'A Thousand Years' for World Downs Day 2018

When DD was about 16 weeks old I remember reading about a baby born on the same day as her that had been murdered by its parents. I'd had to go back to work when DD was 13 weeks and I was at work when I read it. I remember thinking I spent every waking moment missing my baby but this poor baby had only known pain and fear in its short life. 19 years ago and I'm crying again remembering it.

On a brighter note I remember the Mary Rose being raised too. I was perplexed because I wasn't expecting it to be made of yellow metal - it took me some time to realise that the yellow metal I saw was the cradle they used!

Little girl Kimberley who died after abuse in around 1985, she'd been rescued and died in the policewoman's arms a few minutes later. It seemed so cruel that she was rescued only to die then. The stories were on the newspapers we'd covered the desk with before art at primary school. If I see the name Kimberley my mind always goes to her.
After the musical Annie came out the little girl who played her appealed on Newsround for someone to home the dog who played Sandy. I remember thinking how grownup Annie was
Baby P-similar age to my ds
The girl who was killed on a school trip in France. I remember reading how her friends (from her dormitory) were separated from the rest while they questioned them, and I think they were watching the news and it came up that she'd been murdered and they hadn't realised, they'd thought she was ill.

Dunblane
9/11
Caroline Hogg and Susan Maxwell
The Chilean Miners.

Neil Entwistle and the murders of Rachel and Lillian Entwistle.
Sarah Harper's murder - we were the same age and lived in the same town, yet my parents never kept me off the streets or seemed overly worried about my safety
Dunblane, Lockerbie, Bradford Fire disaster, Beslan.
An awful air show disaster in the Ukraine, and Rammstein.
The Chateau de Fretay murder which unfolded somewhat here on Mumsnet.

And on the other side of the coin, the chap that turned up for a job interview at the BBC and a name mix up meant he ended up being interviewed live about the music industry. He totally blagged it, just thinking of his confused face makes me laugh.
Lots of viral stories that got the autotune treatment "they climbing in yo windows, hide yo children hide yo wife" etc.

9/11 is the one everyone alive at the time and old enough to does remember. I was home with dd who was just a baby at the time. Ex (then husband, army) phoned, told me to stay home, watch the news and he had no idea when he'd be home not to expect him that night certainly. He was right he didn't make it home till the following afternoon. As I got off the phone I saw footage of the 2nd plane hitting which had happened while he was on the phone to me. Ex is the least scaremongering type even with that job and he still warned me against using trains for the following few weeks and to keep my wits about me re suspicious packages etc. He knew I'd been an army brat during IRA years so knew the kinda thing to look out for.

Hillsborough - was dating a sports mad guy at the time and we were watching the match preamble on telly. I NEVER bought the "drunken fans causing trouble" bullshit cos I remembered seeing people helping kids get over the barriers and hearing shouts of "get help"

Chernobyl - happened at pretty much the height of the Cold War. Was genuinely frightened for nuclear fallout reaching us as nobody seemed to know at first what the risks were.

Zeebrugge ferry disaster - I lived somewhere that meant I was taking ferries myself quite regularly, awful.

Lockerbie - just horrific

Dunblane - also horrific and near some relatives.

Way too many child disappearances/deaths - and it's almost always somebody the child knows well & trusts, it's got the point now any male relatives they show in "appeals" I suspect (as apparently do the police)

Rachel McLean murder - I was living in Oxford at the time and felt something was off about where she'd supposedly gone from the beginning.

The Jill saward rape. The appallingly low sentences they got for the rape were shocking to me at the time - sadly I now know better.

Elizabeth fritzl - poor woman I can't imagine how you begin to recover from that! Jaycee dugard too.

Peter Tobin & similar - too often these people have already been convicted before of violent crimes. If Tobin had been serving a full life tariff for his rape conviction some of his victims could well still be alive.

The Berlin Wall coming down, my mum was in bits watching that news and through her tears trying to explain to me how awful it going up was.

Holly & Jessica - we (ex and I) were living near there at the time. I remember feeling nauseous as soon as Huntley was on telly even though at that time most people just thought he was s glory hunting twit! After Huntley was known to be at least a suspect I remember a journalist saying that she was among the press at that event where Huntley was pushing himself forward. She'd been a journalist a long time and it was the first time she felt she could not stand to touch a person and she'd dodged a handshake from him. She was saying she was so glad she did as she thought she'd have felt like scrubbing him off her if she had. Iirc she was also alluding to the fact that his confidence suggested this was not the first time he'd done this - I've always thought it strange that even with his "history" there seem to have been no investigations into whether he's implicated in other similar crimes in places he's lived that are unsolved.

Fred & rose west - again was living nearby at the time (dad and ex army moved around a lot). Angers me that within a few years after so many promises made that runaways wouldn't be ignored any more that this is exactly what happened.

Suzanne capper - ashamed to say that's the first I've heard of her. How the hell is it at all acceptable any of her attackers are free? Vile bastards!

I cried when Barack won the presidency, and I'm white! Seems ridiculous now but I really hoped it meant USA were becoming more enlightened and generally we tend to follow where they go. Sadly was a temporary situation apparently.

I've just read about Suzanne Capper and I can't believe I'd never heard this before. Totally sick and I can't believe her murderers have been released

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@nonvalidusername. I've just googled and read about the chateau de fretay murder. What did mumsnet have to do with it?

And the Matthew Shephard death is another one I remember reading about at the time, must be 20 years ago now as I was in secondary school. He was an out gay student in Wyoming (rare at the time) who met 2 homophobes at a bar, who befriended him and told them they were gay as well and asked did he want to go to a party. They took him into a rural area, tied him with barbed wire onto a make shift fence and pistol whipped him then left him for dead. he was found six days later alive but died later in hospital. It raised a lot of awareness for homophobic hate crimes and IIRC triggered changes in the law

There was a mumsnet thread where the OP had stayed there and had a terrible experience, saying avoid it like the plague. Then when the murder happened the press appeared on the thread trying to get in touch with the OP. When I say it 'unfolded' on mumsnet I mean that's where I read about it first

Thanks, that does ring a bell actually.

Billie-Jo Jenkins. I desperately want to know the truth of who murdered her.

Charlene Lennon and Lisa Hoodless (kidnapped in Eastbourne and turned up alive). I read the book they wrote and they both had difficult lives before and after, what happened to them was just sickening.

Little girl who was taken from a tent in a Welsh garden.

The Phillpotts, and more recently the children in Salford all killed in a firebomb attack.

The little girl in Wales - Llandudno- was Sophie Hook.

James Bulger
Stephen Lawrence
Shannon Matthews
Christopher Jefferies

Millie Dowler.
Grenfell Tower. One of my colleagues lived on the estate. His daughter went to the nursery in the block and his heartbreak at talking to us about how he was going to explain to his daughter what happened.
A few weeks after DS was born, there was a story in the news of a newborn baby who had died from dehydration as he wasn't getting enough milk. I remember my DH crying as that could easily have been our son. I had blocked ducts which no one knew about at the time. No one had realised I wasn't even producing colostrum and despite everyone telling me not to give up and to persevere with feeding, when he was about 18 hours old I gave him a bottle of premade formula and he sprang to life. That could have been our son we were reading about.

Ann Maguire being shot and killed by her pupil.

The kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, and her escape.

Elisabeth Fritzl.

The family in California who were chained to furniture, and the daughter who escaped and raised the alarm.

Aberfan, and i was t even born when it happened. I learnt about it 20 years later, studying geology at university in s wakes. My lecturer was local and had worked for the coal board. Even after al that time, there was raw emotion in his voice.

I’m not sure if it made national news, but was huge locally. A few years ago, a well known cyckyst in our area was severely injured in a road rage attack. He was hospitalised and lived, but I don’t think he ever left hospital. He was certainly not well if he did. He died of his injuries a very very short time after the cut off for murder (I think it’s a year and a day). West Yorks police got the case reopened, in order to re-try the driver for murder. There was a whiteb”ghost bike” at the scene of the incident for ages after, it met still be there. I’m a cyclist, I know his daughter at but, I know that road. That story is never going to leave me.

A lot of mine have been mentioned. But the Bradford fire, I was watching when it started, I was pregnant and exh was working, I was crying so much.
Keith Bennett the boy who hasn't been found on the moors my ds went to Liverpool uni so we were going across a lot and alway thought of him and his poor mum.

The theatre siege in Moscow in 2002. The resolution was just horrifying and I remember the attack on the Bataclan in Paris years later just praying to anything that there wouldn’t be a similar outcome.

More recently Grenfell because of family connections to the area. Watching from afar, it was devastating and I find it difficult to talk about, air my views and follow the inquiry.