Mum's heartbreak as housing developer 'trashes' memorial to her murdered sons

A mum whose four young sons were murdered by their own dad has been left "devastated" after finding their memorial garden "trashed".

Sam Tolley's four boys - Joshua, seven, Thomas, six, Callum, five, and Daniel, three - were murdered by their father back in 2003. Keith Young forced his wife to listen on the phone as he killed them before taking his own life.

A memorial garden was set up in memory of the children at Handley Hill Primary School, in Winsford, Cheshire, where they were pupils, Cheshire Live reports. But when Sam turned up at her children's memorial this week, she was shocked to find that housing developer Linden Homes had destroyed the garden.

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In a Facebook post, she said: "My boys' memorial garden. What do I do or who do I go and see? Totally heartbroken. How can they do this and get away with it? No warning to tell me, I turn up and looks like this. I was told the garden under no circumstances would be touched, devastated isn't the word.”

The school was closed by Cheshire County Council back in 2009 and property developers Linden Homes were then given permission to build houses on the school's site years later. However, one key condition of the planning approval was that the developers had to keep the memorial garden as part of the new development.

It had been agreed that the developers would meet up with Sam to discuss plans of how the new memorial garden would look when it was completed as it was a condition of planning approval that the memorial garden would be retained, but this has not happened. Work to clear up vegetation from the site and prepare the ground for the new garden has started, but there