Saturday, December 20, 2014
This is the heartbreaking scene outside Tooting TK Maxx tonight as a homeless woman insists on spending the night where she and her son lived for nine months.
Emergency services were called to the bench on Monday and the Somali woman washospitalised after suffering from cold.
The next day the bench was removed when Wandsworth Council decided it was in the best interest of the family who had made the bench their home.
Then just after 3pm today the woman, thought to be in her 60s, returned to the bench to find it is no longer there.
Reporter Ellie Cambridge went to visit the woman tonight and offered her fruit and biscuits. However, the offer was rebuffed.
The woman is now huddled up on a chair, using an umbrella to shelter her from the rain.
She is wrapped up in blankets, alone, on the exact spot where the bench once stood.
Residents expressed their shock at the bench's removal, with many criticising it as a short-term solution to the family’s problems.
The mother and son centred their lives around the public bench outside TK Maxx, in Tooting High Street.
It is understood the woman's son is in hospital.
Tooting MP Sadiq Khan recently called for checks on the family to be increased and added: “Going forward, my priority is to make sure the family have all of the support they need in the long term, and I will continue to work with the council and the police to help seek a solution sooner rather than later.”