The thieves are getting younger.

Is this an occasion for the parents to be held responsible?
You don’t learn to drive or tow a caravan without adult input-even if it’s only them allowing him to practise.
Then there’s the contents of the car. If he “didn’t know” then someone is responsible.

An 11 year old boy driving and towing a caravan that's just unbelievable. What has been going on in his life? he is still a child. Where are his parents or carers? Where are the authorities in this he could have died in an accident on the motorway and possibly killed others at the same time the others being innocent people who were legally entitled to be on the road. It's shocking what is going on in the world lately.

It's called Humour 🙂V3ra !

From The Independent today:

"An 11-year-old boy was arrested after police stopped the BMW towing the caravan on Thursday afternoon.

Police searched the car and found equipment typically used by suspects to carry out thefts, and a variety of registration plates.

The boy was arrested on suspicion of offences including theft, burglary, going equipped for theft, and motoring offences including dangerous driving. He was questioned and then released on conditional police bail."

...commendable.
...incredible , takes some doing !
...cracking young driver though !

Really? 😳

*Jennifer Eccles*- spot on.

But it didn't, that's why I said " cracking young driver"🙂

cracking young driver though!

Especially if the stolen car and caravan had caused a major accident on a busy road, possibly maiming and killing others.

Another Bluebelle supporter here, cracking young driver though !

Whether the assumptions are correct or not, it is distasteful to suggest (without proof) the child's ethnicity on a public forum.
I am with Bluebelle on this.

It was everyone’s first thought despite all the pious comments!

We gave my first car to the 3 children of a farming friend. They drove it down the mile long access road every morning and left it at the gate to wait for their taxi pick-up for school, then did the same in reverse at night. At the time, none of them was 11 and they all drove it - Fiat 500 - for years.

Bluebelle 👍 keep going

Having taught at a school with a great many traveller children, who came and went regularly, that this child. Kuldip be a traveller was my first thought .

Exactly my point BlueBelle

It's not a guessing game "guess the ethnicity".

Yes it is NotSpaghetti! Several of us had the same thought as to this boy's background. Time will tell if we were right
And you still don’t get it my good grief, head in hands

Oh my goodness you still don’t get it Avaline it’s nothing to do with you being right or wrong it’s the immediate assumptions on a public forum that you can name the ethnicity of child no one has ANY information about !!!

The equivalent would be if I wrote ‘I had a big plant stolen off my doorstep last night’ and you wrote ‘Ah that would be a Lillipudlian taking your plant’

Yes it is NotSpaghetti! Several of us had the same thought as to this boy's background. Time will tell if we were right.

Older people have 'used' children for criminal activities for ever, probably since the dawn of recorded history and before...

The fact that there was no 'age of criminal responsibility'' until relatively recently, which meant the children could be subject to the same draconian punishments as their elders, didn't seem to have much of a deterrent effect...

You are right nanna8

I once worked with a particularly jolly ex-offender who had been put through windows as a boy and gone on to a career in crime. It was this man who demonstrated "how to remove an old-style patio door in 30 seconds! 😱

If the older criminal who "took him under his wing" had been a car thief I guess his skills might have been different!

It's not about accuracy Aveline!

Loads of people here learn to drive by the time they are 12. Mostly on farms driving paddock bombs. Many of my friends learnt that way, male and female. A thing that is happening here is older crims getting young kids to do their burgling and house breaking because if they get caught nothing happens to them because they are so young.

Comments may be based on prior experience with a particular 'group' or 'tribe'. Time will tell who has guessed most accurately.

Blue Belle.

I disagree with your comment about Vera making assumptions.
She has a distinguished track record for profiling criminals and solving crimes in the North.
Meg.

I don't know the area but think he'd just got on the M1. They were tracking the vehicle.

The police said "the vehicle was stopped on the M1 after it left the A1 at Hook Moor Interchange near Garforth."

I'm still trying to get my head around an 11 year old towing a caravan. If today was April 1st, I wouldn't have believed it.