News about Paul Stocker

Neil Fell had a heavy heart when he went to check on his Welsh mountain sheep on a warm August day last year. His father Brian had passed away from cancer at the age of just 62 and Neil had attended his funeral at the family's local church in the County Durham village of Brancepeth only two days earlier. Neither Neil nor his farmhands had done their daily check on the 800-strong flock grazing the land three miles from his farmhouse since the day of the funeral but, even so, nothing could have prepared Neil for what would greet him. Three hundred of his sheep - 120 ewes and 180 lambs worth about £18,000 in all - had been stolen. They had been removed, it later emerged, in broad daylight, perhaps at the very time that Neil's father was being laid to rest.