A mother who killed herself and her disabled daughter had been terrorised by a gang of youths and had her repeated pleas for help ignored by police, an inquest was told yesterday.

Fiona Pilkington, 38, burnt to death with her daughter, Francecca Hardwick, 18, after dousing the parked car that they were in with petrol and setting it alight.

The single mother, her daughter and teenage son, Anthony, had endured ten years of being virtual prisoners in their own home as a gang of up to 16 “street kids” tormented them for simply “existing”.

Despite Mrs Pilkington and her family repeatedly calling the police and reporting that they had received death threats, she was told to close her curtains and ignore the children, a jury was told. A Leicestershire Police log shows that she called them more than twenty times in seven years to say that her severely dyslexic son’s life had been threatened, her daughter, who had acute special needs, was being bullied and her house was under attack from the gang of youths.

But none of the gang, which included girls and some boys as young as 10, was arrested, charged or prosecuted.

The inquest at Loughborough Town Hall was told how an officer was rarely sent to the house, even when one neighbour dialled 999 claiming that the family was cowering inside as the gang lay siege.

Instead, the majority of police logs showed that no officer was available and ended with the words “incident closed”.

It was only when Mrs Pilkington wrote to her MP to say that she could not protect her own children and her hair was falling out from the stress that police began to try to tackle the problem.

Mrs Pilkington had “given up”, however, believing that nothing could be done.

She took her daughter and the family’s pet rabbit and drove at night to a secluded lay-by on the A47 near Earl Shilton in October 2007.

She emptied the fuel from a ten-litre petrol can into the inside of her Austin Maestro before igniting it. Their charred remains, discovered by a lorry driver, had to be identified from DNA samples.

Mrs Pilkington’s mother, Pamela Cassell, 72, who had moved into her daughter’s home to offer support, received a letter from Mrs Pilkington explaining her actions. Mrs Cassell, who had been looking after Anthony at the time, also found her daughter’s house keys in the envelope.

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