Mother turns detective to find her daughter's muggers

Felix Allen12 April 2012

A mother told how she turned detective and tracked down her daughter's muggers after becoming frustrated with the police.

Kelly Scott traced the suspects, got back a stolen mobile phone, extracted an apology and secured the arrest of two suspects.

The 33-year-old from Lewisham took action after two teenage girls threatened her daughter Blue, 12, with a knife at a bus station, and forced her to hand over her mobile.

Unhappy with the police response, over the following week she called the mobile repeatedly and texted warnings to the muggers saying she was on their trail.

She "went out on the streets" and recruited friends to make local enquiries before generating a "few leads". Eventually, Miss Scott found out the suspects' names and addresses.

She said she persuaded them to meet her outside a nightclub this month - where they apologised and the phone was handed back.

Miss Scott told the News Shopper that after reporting the offence, "the police stuck us in the car, and drove us around for five minutes looking for them before they got bored of it. They gave us no crime number, nothing. I heard nothing from Lewisham police station from the night it happened."

After realising "nothing was getting done", she said, "I felt pretty hopeless as a mother. So I went out on the streets and got a few other people inquiring.

"By the end I had their names, addresses and everything."

The day after the phone was returned, police called her asking Blue to come in to give a statement. "The police were quite shocked that I'd got the phone back," said Miss Scott.

"I said to him, 'Just call me supermum, because I've done it.' I told them, 'I'm a very persistent mother. I basically went out there and did your job for you.' It only took me one week.

"Mums need to know, you don't have to sit there feeling helpless. You've just got to be a good detective - like me."

A police spokesman confirmed two teenage girls had been arrested in connection with the mugging and were going through the courts system.

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