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Mother was killed by fireworks that teenagers placed in the mailbox – son wants to ban | Great Britain | News

Mother was killed by fireworks that teenagers placed in the mailbox – son wants to ban | Great Britain | News

The son of an elderly woman who tragically died in a fireworks incident has called for fireworks to be banned except on four specific dates. Josephine Smith, 88, died of smoke inhalation after two teenagers maliciously placed fireworks through her mailbox.

Callum Dunn, then 15, and Kai Cooper, then 18, threw fireworks at drivers and businesses in Harold Wood, East London, before targeting Josephine’s home. Josephine, who is hard of hearing, was asleep at her home in Romford, Essex, and was later found dead from smoke inhalation.

The teenagers were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter: Dunn received three years and eight months, and Cooper received five years. Alan Smith, 55, Josephine’s son, initiated a petition to change the laws on the sale and use of fireworks.

He suggests they should only be available on November 5, December 25 and 31 and Diwali, and advocates a ban on garden boxes costing less than £50. The fireworks used in the fatal incident were sold to the boys by Mark Vardy, 59, in October 2021, who provided them despite knowing he was going to throw them at people.

CCTV footage from Fireworks 4 U shows Vardy offering to buy “air bombs” after one of the teenagers mentioned plans to throw fireworks at police. Vardy, from Westcliffe-on-Sea, Essex, was given a 12-month suspended sentence earlier this month after admitting two counts of selling fireworks to a 15-year-old.

Alan Vardy, a fuel tanker driver in London, has spoken out after his home was destroyed in a fire caused by fireworks. The fire claimed the life of his mother and destroyed much of their property in Harold Wood. He stated: “You can set off fireworks from 7am to 11pm all year round.”

He went on to express his frustration about the widespread abuse of fireworks: “There’s so much hate around fireworks, but that’s mostly because they’re used all year round.” Regarding certain events for the use of fireworks, he suggested, “Even for the sake of the fireworks industry, if they limited themselves to those events, they wouldn’t get so much grief.”

Arguing for more regulated pleasure, he added: “People can enjoy them when they’re intended to be used and they shouldn’t be so readily available.”

Reflecting on the tragic incident, Alan recalled: “The whole house was burning and smoldering for a while, the firework landed on her washing basket and it was the smoke that unfortunately took Mum’s life.” He described the extent of the damage: “From the inside, 60 to 70 percent of the house was damaged.”

His petition to reform fireworks has more than 64,000 signatures and calls for changes, including the time of year when fireworks can be set off. Mr Vardy is also calling for a mandatory 25-year-old to buy fireworks, a £50 minimum value for garden boxes and stricter licensing of fireworks sales.

He complained about the current lax rules: “Calling 25 is not mandatory, even if selling alcohol.” After sharing the motivation behind the change, he ended with a message emphasizing responsibility: “The guys who bought the fireworks, one of them was 15 years old, and he was able to buy them so easily.”

His goal is to restore a sense of tradition: “So I want to encourage it to be more of a family affair, like it was years ago.”

“Again, if the individual fireworks that were bought had a minimum sale of £50 and only display boxes, it would have prevented those fireworks from being used as they were.

“The store clerk tells Cooper and Dunn on the CCTV that you can hold them and throw them, and that’s what haunted me the most. The two guys, when they were buying fireworks, clearly stated on CCTV that they wanted to throw them at the police and terrorize people – this is what haunts us more than anything, so we need proper training and better education for store staff.

“It would be great to check the legislation – it’s getting a bit lenient in how it’s applied. My mother was a wonderful woman – an impeccably beautiful woman, and the idea behind the petition is just to try to find things to prevent what happened to my mother from happening to others.”

You can find more about Alan’s petition here.