London - Police yesterday found the bodies of three young children in a car - and then a dead man in a nearby copse. Staffordshire police were called to the Weaver Hills area in Wootton, near Uttoxeter, after a call from a member of the public. Detectives, who are treating the deaths as suspicious, are working on the assumption that they were all related.
The dead children, two girls and a boy, were found in a black Ford Capri. All are thought by the police to be from the Uttoxeter or Stafford area.
Shocked residents in the surrounding area told how they feared a tragedy had occurred yesterday morning. Ms Faye Whitefield, from the Post Office at the nearby village of Ellastone, said: "We knew something was going on but the area was completely sealed off. People were talking about it all day, not knowing whether there had been a suicide or a murder."