Manea woman describes terrifying run in with hare coursers

An elderly villager says she was left badly shaken after being driven off the road by a marauding horde of hare courses.

Joan Bishop, 85, was driving through her home village of Manea on Saturday (January 25) morning when she found herself caught up in a convoy of hare coursers.

Around a dozen 4x4s came up behind Joan as she drove around a tight bend on Station Road into High Street with a passenger friend also in her eighties beside her.

Joan said: “I am always looking in my mirror and checking, and as looked in my mirror I could see this group of really dirty 4x4s coming up behind me.

“They were absolutely filthy and the speed they were going was really frightening. I tried to pull over to give them room, but they just whizzed past me. How they missed me I don’t know – it was quite terrifying, they weren’t going to stop or wait for anybody.

“That is a really tight bend and if something had been coming the other way I dread to think what would have happened, it was lucky no one was killed.”

Joan was just one of a multitude of people including farmers who had run-ins with the rampaging group of balaclava-wearing hare coursers who brought an unprecedented level of lawlessness to Fenland on Saturday.

The situation described as “shocking and appalling criminality” spurred local MP Steve Barclay working with Manea Councillor Charlie Marks to call an emergency meeting in the village on Monday evening, which was attended by Cambridgeshire’s Chief Constable Nick Dean, Police and Crime Commissioner Darryl Preston and at least 300 seriously concerned Citizens.

Chief Constable Dean had to listen to tale after tale of failures by his police force as 999 calls from those under threat from the gangs of hare courses numbering at least 70 travelling in convoys of 25 to 30 vehicles across Fenland, went unanswered.

Joan said: “I would love to have attended the meeting to tell them what happened to me, and how frightened it made me, but unfortunately I don’t like to go out after dark.

“I have never seen anything like it, and the speed and number of those 4x4s were absolutely terrifying to experience.”