A teenager filmed himself destroying a memorial to two young boys who died in a ‘horrific’ car crash.
Ryan Edwards, 18, kicked flowers and shredded personal tributes left at the site where Mason Renhard, 17, and Damien Dean, 16, were killed in Corhampton, Hampshire, in July 2025.
In the clip, which Edwards sent to one of Mason’s friends, he says: ‘You tried to steal my girl and everything back in 2023. You know the ting bruv, now you’re dead, and this is what happens to you.’
Mason’s family said the flowers ‘were the only way we had left to honour our child’, adding: ‘We were already living every parent’s worst nightmare, and Ryan chose to make it worse.’
Edwards admitted criminal damage at Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court and was sentenced to 300 hours of unpaid work.
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He was also told to pay each of the boys’ families £350 in compensation.
The magistrate said the attack was ‘sickening and serious’ and condemned Edwards for piling more ‘stress and turmoil’ on the grieving families.
In a victim impact statement, Mason’s family said: ‘Nothing in this world compares to the pain of losing a child.
‘Since the day Mason died in that horrific crash with Damo, our lives have been consumed by grief – raw, relentless, and overwhelming.
‘Every morning we wake up and remember all over again that he is gone. There is no break from the pain. No escape. We are parents living with a wound that will never heal.
‘In the middle of that unbearable grief, we placed flowers, tributes, and messages of love at the site where our boy lost his life.
‘That memorial became the only place we could go to feel close to Mason – to talk to him, to cry for him, to try to make sense of a reality that will never make sense.
‘Those flowers were the only way we had left to honour our child, and then Ryan took it upon himself to destroy them.
‘He didn’t just damage a few items. He destroyed hundreds of pounds worth of memorial flowers and tributes – symbols of love, heartbreak and memory. He shattered the only fragile peace we had managed to build.
‘We were already living every parent’s worst nightmare, and Ryan chose to make it worse. He made a conscious decision to add trauma to parents who were already broken.
‘If he ever becomes a parent, and if he ever loves a child the way we love Mason, perhaps then he will realise the sheer cruelty of what he did.
‘And maybe, when he looks at his record, he will finally feel the shame he should have felt the moment he touched those flowers.’
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