Garden furniture stolen from Doncaster care home found abandoned in subway

Shocked Cheryl Purdy put out an appeal on Facebook yesterday after finding a garden bench stashed in the graffiti strewn underpass which runs under Thorne Road to Town Fields.

And when she used the subway again this morning, she was stunned to find the bench had been joined by a wooden table and three chairs.

She reported the incidents to South Yorkshire Police and it emerged that the items had been taken from the nearby St Mary’s Nursing Home, which overlooks the subway.

She said: “This subway needs serious attention. We have to take our kids to school this way.”

The ageing underpass is regularly used by pupils and parents of nearby Town Field Primary School to avoid crossing Thorne Road near its junction with Town Moor Avenue.

She said that she contacted the care home who said the furniture would be retrieved.

We have contacted the nursing home for comment.

The subway, which is daubed in graffiti and covered in litter, has long been a magnet for anti-social behaviour, drug taking and prostitution, being in the centre of Doncaster’s red light district.

In 2008, the body of sex worker Cheryl Camm, 28, was found brutally murdered in the subway.

Teenager Kieran Blackwell, 18, of Manse Close, Cantley, pleaded guilty to her murder and was sentenced to at least 11 and a half years.

Jailing Blackwell, Judge Mr Justice King said the attack was "ferocious, brutal and sustained".