Travellers' feud led to kidnap - Essex

From the Chelmsford Weekly News

A FEUD between travelling families boiled over the night two young children were kidnapped.

A court heard a boy aged four and his two-year-old sister had disappeared with their mother when she split up with her partner two months earlier.

Kerry Anne Mitchell was living with her children in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, when they were snatched by her former partner, Albert Buckley junior, known as Quincy, on March 26, 2011.

That same night Quincy’s brother, Shane Buckley, 23, of Woodham Road, Stow Maries, allegedly armed himself with an axe and went to Kerry Anne’s aunt’s house in Clark’s Rise, Cold Norton.

He demanded Kerry Anne’s uncle, Anthony Loveridge, come outside to sort things out, but went away when he was ignored.

At 6am he and other members of the Buckley family descended on the house where Shane Buckley kicked open the front door and property inside was damaged by various individuals, the court heard.

Shane Buckley denied he had turned up with an axe, but giving evidence, Susan Barton, 34, said she talked to him from her bedroom window.

She said: “He was swinging what I later realised was an axe. I could see the sparks flying as it hit the concrete path.”

She agreed a feud had developed between the families.

The trial on kidnap and perverting justice for all ten people involved was expected to last four weeks.

But at the start of the case, Albert Buckley junior – Quincy – 25, of Woodham Road, Chelmsford, and Tom Johnson, 19, of Cranham Hall caravan site, Little Waltham, both changed their pleas to guilty to kidnap.

The judge adjourned sentence until September 19 on Quincy and Johnson and released them on bail.