Children are left devastated after tree is chopped down and stolen from their Sutton home (From Keighley News)
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Children are left devastated after tree is chopped down and stolen from their Sutton home
3:00pm Friday 28th December 2012 in News
Archie and Mollie Elsworth standing where their tree use to be
A Sutton family’s Christmas suffered a blow after a pine tree was chopped down.
The 12-foot tree was cut down hours before a mum and her two young children were to decorate it with festive lights.
Katie Elsworth, of Crag Top Farm on West Lane, and her son Archie, nine, and daughter Molly, seven, were away when the thieves reached over the garden wall to chop down the Korean pine, leaving only the bottom three feet of the tree.
“I can’t believe why anybody would chop it down,” said Mrs Elsworth, 42.
“I’ve never seen Archie so upset. It took an hour-and-a-half for him to stop crying.
“He said to me: ‘Mummy, that’s not what the spirit of Christmas is about’. I think it was the first realisation for them that the world isn’t what we’ve painted it to be.”
Former farm owner Gwen Harrison and her children bought the tree for her late husband Leslie, who planted the Korean pine 30 years ago.
