SOUTH YORKSHIRE police were given more time yesterday to question two brothers of primary school age over a vicious assault in which two other young boys were beaten, slashed and burned before their mobile phones and runners were stolen.
As police officers interviewed the 10- and 11-year-old brothers, mounted police and cycle teams patrolled the former mining village of Edlington, near Doncaster, although detectives are not looking for anyone else in connection with the attack in the semi-wild Martin Wells area on Saturday afternoon.
The prolonged attack in the scrubland, which is close to a derelict railway cutting, is also understood to have involved sexual humiliation, and has left families in the area in shock.
The whole Martin Wells land was sealed off yesterday by police, who removed several sackfuls of material from the site.
The older victim, who is 11, was moved to a high dependency ward in Sheffield Children’s Hospital yesterday, after he was taken off a ventilator in the intensive care unit. The other victim, who is nine and the nephew of the older one, underwent a second operation at Doncaster Royal Infirmary after receiving a deep knife cut in one of his arms.
Both boys are well known on the estate of former colliery houses, where the younger one was found in the street covered in blood, trying to get home in a daze and telling rescuers: “My uncle can’t see and I can’t find him.”
The older boy, whose mother died from cancer eight years ago, lives a street away from the younger one, whose parents were at his bedside in the infirmary yesterday. The two children were described by neighbours yesterday as “normal lads, keen on football and often playing out together”.
The older of the victims was discovered half-naked and semi-conscious after neighbours comforting his nephew alerted police. – (Guardian service)