Vandals have smashed the gravestones of two Keighley men who were killed in tragic accidents just four days apart.

A Keighley councillor this week branded the attackers as 'scum of the earth'.

Vandals removed and smashed to smithereens the porcelain photograph in the headstone of John Lund, who was mown down by a hit-and-run driver in May 1995 as he walked his dog in a quiet lane near his Utley home.

They also wrecked the photograph in the grave of 22-year-old Darren Scott, who died at Kirkby Lonsdale in a car crash as he travelled to work as a kitchen fitter from his Riddlesden home in the same month.

Both men's graves lie side-by-side in Utley cemetery, where earlier this year vandals kicked over and smashed the gravestones of two soldiers. Darren's mum Joan was grief-stricken when she saw the damage at the cemetery on Sunday. "I was with my husband Brian and when he saw it he said 'Oh, my God'," she says. "He then saw John's and his was completely smashed to bits. I was so upset - I still am. The people who did this should rot in hell."

The vandals were unable to remove Darren's photograph, but the attackers prized out Mr Lund's photo and then smashed it on the ground. His widow Clare says: "I can't understand the mentality of people who can do something like this. They are philistines.

"It seems they managed to get John's photograph out and then just smashed it to bits. What kind of person does that?"

Labour councillor Barry Thorne, whose job as leisure chief involves him overseeing cemeteries, has hit out at the vandals. He says: "To describe people who behave like that as being animals would be an insult to animals. They are the scum of the earth." He has great sympathy for the families but says it is not feasible to patrol all the graveyards all the time - the cost would be astronomical. But he promises to investigate the attacks.

Opinion, page 10

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