Heartbroken mum ends silence: ‘I lost my beautiful boy in this motorcycle madness. It must end’

THE mother of a teenage boy who died after being thrown from a stolen motorcycle has broken her silence to condemn joyriders.

Brad Williamson, 14, suffered fatal head injuries in June last year when the bike he was riding smashed into a car.

Now his mum Katie Lothian has called for a police crackdown in a bid to stop others losing their lives, insisting: “It has to stop.”

Her comments come just a week after a 10 year old boy was knocked down and badly hurt in a motorbike hit-and-run outside an Edinburgh police station near where Brad died.

Speaking to The Sunday Post, Katie, 45, said: “Brad’s death broke our family. It gave me depression. I don’t want to go out the house. I’m scared of the traffic. I hear a car and I think: ‘That’s a motorbike’.

“I move Brad’s photo about every day and I talk to him. I light a candle in the morning and in the evening. It helps me.

“Our whole family is just broken. It’s like all the happiness has been sucked out.”

Brad would have turned 16 this month, and around 50 family and friends gathered to release 200 balloons in his memory last Friday.

“I knew there was an issue with motorbikes around here but now the problem has just got
bigger and bigger and bigger,” Katie said.

“You hear them all the time – constantly. It’s horrible. It’s got to stop. I’m scared to cross the road, because I’m registered blind anyway.

“It’s got worse, because the police can’t do anything.

“There needs to be something more that the police can do.

“The police have got bairns out there themselves. I feel sorry for the police. It’s not their fault. I think the council and the police and even the community need to get together and say, ‘Right, this is it.’ ”

Katie said the problem of youths stealing motorbikes and joyriding through Edinburgh had only got worse since Brad’s death.

And she insisted some of the boys Brad hung around with – who are still only 15 – are still out riding stolen bikes late into the night, having learnt nothing from his death.

Chief Inspector Stephen Sutherland of Drylaw Police Station – just yards from the scene of last Saturday’s crash – insisted police had “a number of strategies in place”.

However, he added: “If we are to fully tackle this type of behaviour in north Edinburgh we need the support of the local community.”

Donald Wilson, Edinburgh Council’s communities leader, insisted efforts to tackle motorbike crime had taken “a great step forward”. He added: “Recently, the council embarked on a series of workshops in local secondary schools and youth clubs to address the risks young drivers face.”