The topic of vigilante justice always brings a certain point of contention- to what extent is it fine? Recently, a father of two kids tackled two home invaders and drove them off the road on his Mercedes. However, he ended up being prosecuted for it. The two home invaders, Ryan Paul and Taylor Benford had been armed with bolt cutters and a crowbar when they decided to break into the family home of Adam White in September 2019.
Adam also had his 34-year-old wife and his two children in his house at that point. After realizing that they weren’t alone, the two managed to get away on a motorbike. However, the father chased them in his Mercedes 4X4 and ran them off the road. The two invaders suffered quite a few serious injuries like broken bones, a fractured skull, and bleeding in the brain.
Adam White was then sentenced to around 22 months in prison in February 2022. The reason was causing serious injury by reckless driving. On the other hand, the burglars walked away free from court with a sentence that was completely suspended. Interestingly, this case got a lot of traction on social media. It happened after a Channel 4 documentary series- “24 Hours in Police Custody”, aired the entire case as an episode.
This sparked an immense outpouring of sympathy from the viewers. They were absolutely outraged that the man who was protecting his family had been convicted. This outpouring also led to the supporters raising enough money to pay off the legal fees. One individual tweeted, “I felt broken for you and your wife. An honest man makes a mistake, an understandable one, but gets sent to prison, while two career robbers go free. I’m so sorry the justice system failed you.”
Legal Fees Of Adam White To Be Paid By Fundraiser
Twitter user Tony Maudsley said, “If you’re as angry as me at last night’s #24hoursinpolicecustody you might want to throw a couple of quid in the direction of Adam White whose life was devastated and his life savings lost to pay legal fees. Our justice system has much to answer for.”
On November 28th, Adam was quite overwhelmed by the supportive messages that he had received. He stated, “Thank you to everyone for your kind words and heartfelt sympathy we have been through an awful lot, it was hard seeing this on TV and with all the messages I’ve received has been amazing and very emotional. I honestly can’t believe the public is behind me.” This also led to a domino effect. A viewer also established a GoFundMe for paying Adam’s legal fees. Adam had spent close to 50,000 pounds of his family savings, credit cards, and multiple loans to pay for the legal fees.
As it turns out, the fundraiser managed to raise close to 91,000 pounds in just a single day. One anonymous person also went on to donate 15,000 pounds in a single day. In a video that was posted by the Whites, the couple stated, “Thank you all for watching the show last night. We were a little bit worried about the backlash of that program being aired but I think it’s gone absolutely crazy. I want to say thank you to everyone for the support it’s been absolutely overwhelming. We’re working through everyone’s messages. It’s been emotional so thank you so much. Massive thank you to Scott for setting up the GoFundMe page, I can’t thank you enough for the help and support. It will help pay off some of our debt, loans and credit cards and hopefully we can replace some of our savings as well.”
The Common Public Was Quite Outraged At The State of Adam White Who Was Simply Protecting His Home
The gratitude at having the legal fees paid was palpable in Lindsay’s words, “We are blown away that in a cost-of-living crisis people would want to help so much so thank you, we love you, we appreciate you all. It’s appreciated.”
The Bedfordshire Police also acknowledged that the documentary did spark a major backlash, as they tweeted their own statement, “People may have seen the return of 24 hours in Police Custody this evening. Policing and the wider criminal justice system divides opinion and undoubtedly tonight’s episode will have done just that. Our officers work incredibly hard to put criminals before the courts and disrupts their activities, but we know that the outcomes received do not always tell the full story. In this case, there were no winners.”
Source
- “Dad-of-two jailed for running burglars off the road ‘blown away’ after strangers raise £121,000 for legal fees.” LBC. Fran Way. November 30, 2022.