A Braintree housing estate may have lost its evening bus service thanks to thugs hurling missiles at the buses.
Since Friday bus operator First's drivers working route number 21 have refused to work after dark, after three successive nights on the Goldingham estate when their buses were pelted with bricks and bits of paving slab.
A driver, who did not wish to be named, said: "It's happened about four times in total, the Goldingham estate's getting quite bad in the evening, and passengers have been saying their cars have been vandalised.
"In the Shakespeare Close area they throw bricks as the bus is going past in that bit of the estate, then leg it across this large field and get you as you're going past Goldingham Hall they could go through the window and kill someone."
Essex County Council contracts out the hourly evening service for First to operate.
Nick Blackall, the council's local bus planning manager, confirmed that drivers had refused to enter the Goldingham estate after dark and said he was urgently trying to organise a meeting between bus operators, the police and estate community representatives, to discuss ways of resolving the problem.
First's management was unavailable for comment
Published Tuesday October 15, 2002
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