A SECOND driver has spoken out about the use of cautions for three youths who threw bricks at his car.

Ray Brown said he accepted that the police’s hands were tied but called for a change in the law.

Mr Brown of William Tennant Way, Upton was driving his mother to Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester to visit his 73-year-old father who had suffered a heart attack when he was forced to take evasive action which he says saved their lives.

The 50-year-old believes it was only years of professional driving experience which had honed his road instincts and prevented them being seriously hurt or even killed.

The boys, one aged 11 and two 12, threw the bricks either from the verge or the footbridge between 6.35pm and 7pm on Wednesday, June 11.

Previously, David Beech, 50, of Malvern, said he was lucky to be alive after a brick smashed his windscreen in front of his face, leaving him £675 out of pocket for the insurance excess. Another victim, driving a 44-tonne tanker, had a brick land on the passenger seat next to him.

Neither Mr Beech nor Mr Brown have even received a letter of apology from the culprits or their parents or any kind of compensation.

Mr Brown said: “They know they can get away with it. That’s why the do it. It’s not the police’s fault – it’s the Government’s. I think it’s disgusting they’re getting a slap on the wrist. It’s a case of ‘don’t do it again – clear off’. There’s too much of a namby pamby state but at 11 or 12 they know they should not be doing that and that it is incredibly dangerous. This might sound a bit over the top but it’s actually attempted murder.”

Mr Brown saw debris in the road which alerted him and then heard his mother gasp, catching sight of an object out of the corner of his eye.

His disabled mother, 72-year-old Joyce Brown, who was in the front passenger seat and has suffered a previous spinal injury, said: “It was quite frightening. They were half bricks and lumps of cement. They were not just stones and pebbles. What could I do? I’m in the passenger seat. I just hung on for dear life. I saw the rocks coming. I just thought ‘where the heck is that going to go?’ and shut my eyes. I had a vision of my husband having to get out of his sickbed to come and visit us.

“I have a grandson who rides a motorbike. If this had been someone on a motorbike going up that road I dread to think what the carnage would have been. We were visiting my husband in hospital and we were already at sixes and sevens. Parents should be made to have responsibility for their children.”

West Mercia Police have already said the youths, all first-time offenders, will undergo an intervention programme where the main focus is on the victim and the consequences of what they have done. The aim is to make them aware of their actions and divert them from re-offending.

comment: page 18