This week 30 years ago: Baby burnt alive in Finsbury Park
Islington Gazette: May 29, 1987 - Credit: Archant
An 18-month-old toddler was burnt alive in his Finsbury Park home.
Neighbours watched in horror as firefighters, police and passers-by battled in vain for half an hour to rescue Darren Links from the ground floor flat in St Thomas’s Road.
His mum, Virginia Links, had run screaming from the blazing flat in the late afternoon.
She was still under a state of sedation at Whittington Hospital as the Gazette went to press.
In other news, Gary Whelan was jailed for six years after being convicted of 13-year-old Tony McCrane’s manslaughter in Cyrus Street, Finsbury.
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Whelan, 19, had been cleared of murder at an Old Bailey trial and Tony’s mum. Kathy, shouted from the public gallery: “Six years for killing my child? It’s a bloody joke.”
Meanwhile, it transpires that snatching offences are nothing new in Islington. A 76-year-old pensioner had her bag – with £3,000 cash inside – swiped in Grenville Road, Upper Holloway. A man escaped in a Ford Capri.
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