Headline

Headline

A child was nearly snatched outside my house.
An adolescent girl grabbed by the arm
she screamed and kicked - good girl! - and got away
A driver stopped and no-one came to harm.

This ‘hooded figure’ didn’t leave us much
to base our new parental fears upon.
He burst into our happy, sunlit world,
provoked a single scream and then was gone

though when he left, he left something behind -
a fear that percolates deep in my chest.
Each day my teenage daughter walks to school
and though of course I do my very best

to kill the thought that she could come to harm,
I do so with a painful pang of shame,
commute each day to London helplessly -
Eastbourne may not ever feel the same.

https://www.eastbourneherald.co.uk/news/crime/investigation-after-attempted-abduction-of-13-year-old-girl-in-eastbourne-1-9139067