Hawick mum angry after home targeted by teenage terrors

Chas Graham returned from a holiday earlier this month to find that a stone had been thrown through the living room window at her house in Burnfoot’s Ruberslaw Road.

To add insult to injury, a few days later she was sitting at home when two young girls flung eggs at the same window.

Chas, 49, and husband Neill, 56 – parents to three sons aged 10, 15 and 23 – have lived in the house for 16 years, and those vandal attacks are just the latest in a series of such incidents.

The couple’s front window has been smashed on at least four previous occasions and their car has been vandalised too, they say.

Chas, a worker at A1 Taxis in Hawick, has received dozens of messages of support since she posted a picture of her home being egged by suspected teenage terrors on Facebook.

She said: “There are a group of young upstarts that are terrorising Burnfoot and terrorising Hawick. I used to love living here, but there is no peace in our home anymore.

“We had been to Blackpool and came back and thought ‘what on earth is that?’ and then realised a pane of glass in the living room had been smashed, then eggs were thrown at the other pane of glass.

“My husband saw two girls running off, but it was dark and the curtains were closed and the neighbours didn’t see anything.

“I don’t think we are being targeted or that it’s personal because this is an issue for so many other people around here too.

“We’ve been in this house 16 years, and it has always been a problem, not just for ourselves but for the whole of the street.

“It’s just continual. We’re asked why we don’t move, but I’ve been in this house all those years, so why should I move?

“The front window has been smashed I would say at least four times and the side window broken once.

“The rear window of our car has been broken, the wing mirror has been kicked and the man who lives directly opposite had a brick put through his car window.

“If I could lift up my house, I would take it somewhere else.”

The family’s plight has sparked sympathetic responses on social media.

Anne Adams posted: “I grew up in Burnfoot, in Scott Crescent. It was a super place to grow up in, but that was in the 1960s.”

Louise Drummond added: “It’s awful that law-abiding folk are being targeted.”