A year after schoolboy’s horrific death, police own up to failings

Police have said sorry to the family of a fire victim schoolboy admitting a series of shocking failures on the first anniversary of his death.

Preston Flores suffered horrific burns after his clothes were ignited last April.

The seven-year-old’s plight shocked the whole of Britain, uniting people behind his devastated family.

However, The Sunday Post can today reveal their grief has been made all the more unbearable by a protracted row with police chiefs over their handling of matters following Preston’s death.

It is only now on the eve of the first anniversary of the tragic incident that an apology has been issued after a number of the family’s complaints were upheld.

Distraught dad Keith Will, 33, said last night: “At least we have an apology from them now. It is a step forward.”

Preston was burnt from the neck down as he and other children played with petrol that had allegedly been left unattended on a council truck in Aberdeen on April 18 last year.

Despite his catastrophic injuries, brave Preston remained conscious and talking, before dying in an Edinburgh hospital on April 22, two days day before his eighth birthday.

In the aftermath of the tragedy we exclusively reported claims by the little boy’s parents Keith and Luisza, 34, that they felt let down by the police response.

And we told how the couple who are demanding a fatal accident inquiry into the tragedy believed they would have received a better service if they lived in a more affluent post code.

An official police complaints investigation into those claims instigated by Preston’s grandmother Fiona Will has concluded that:

Police liaison officers failed to turn up as promised at Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children to support Preston’s parents.

Cops told the dying child’s mother, who had called them to beg an urgent “police escort” to hospital for his grandparents, to call back the following day.

Officers failed to inform the couple that a family statement, pre-prepared in the event of Preston’s death, was being released to TV, radio and newspapers just a few hours after he passed away. They feared the swift timing meant that all relatives might not have been informed.

The force also failed to ensure that Aberdeen City Council workers had thoroughly cleaned the pavement where Preston had been burned, causing distress to his family who had claimed to have later come across fragments of his skin and clothing.

One officer failed to respond to a query from Preston’s family regarding the investigation when he had previously pledged to do so.

Keith, who is bracing himself for the first anniversary of Preston’s death, said: “My precious little boy suffered the most horrific, agonising death imaginable.

“We had to watch him go through that. It should never have happened, yet we still do not have all the answers we need and continue to push for a full-scale public inquiry.

“We were victims too and were furious and disgusted by the way police treated us like second-class citizens. We felt it would have been different if we came from a posh area.”

Preston’s grandmother Fiona, who along with her family is also anxious to hear the outcome of a Health and Safety Executive investigation into the tragedy, said she lodged the complaint with the police on behalf of the family last November.

“It has taken all these months to get this far,” she said last night. “The outcome is a small and partial victory, but it is by no way enough.

“How can a child be burned alive while playing on a city street in the middle of the day and no one can say how or why it happened?

“Petrol is only dangerous when it is ignited. How was it ignited? The police can’t or won’t tell us. Maybe a fatal accident inquiry can.

“In the meantime we hope the police have learned that all members of the public irrespective of what walk of life they are from deserve a good service and one that includes respect and compassion. Preston was everything to us. But we will never again hear his voice, see his cheeky wee face or watch him dance to Gangnam Style.

“We will never know what kind of man he would have grown up to be. We will be letting off balloons for him on his birthday, and each one will carry with it a promise that we will never, ever give up in our fight for our boy.”

Police Scotland issued a full breakdown of the complaint to the boy’s family highlighting what they agreed with and what they didn’t.

Crucially, a top cop agreed the standard of service the family received was not up to scratch.

He said there were “several areas” where police “did not get it right” and he singled out “the standard of service” and “the various aspects of communication”.

The officer said: “Given the nature of the inquiry and the significance in terms of the tragic nature of events, this remains for me an unacceptable position.”