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The mother of a teenager lured to her death over the internet yesterday warned other parents of the dangers of social networking sites. Andrea Hall, 39, spoke of the 'terrible lesson' she had learned. Her 17-year-old daughter Ashleigh was found dead in a ditch on Monday. The student nursery nurse had left home on Sunday evening and told her mother that she would be staying at a friend's house.
She believed she was going to meet a boy of 16 whom she had befriended on the social networking site Facebook. Her body was found at the side of a secluded country road in Sedgefield, County Durham, known locally as a lovers' lane.
Miss Hall, who has three other children, yesterday said the death of her eldest child had devastated the family. She begged other parents: 'Tell your kids to be careful on the internet. Don't meet someone without telling your family where you are going.
'Don't trust anybody and don't put your children on Facebook or other sites if they are underage. We have learned a terrible lesson.' Ashleigh lived with her mother in Darlington and had three sisters - Olivia, six, Ellie, four, and one-year-old Evie.
Miss Hall, who also has a page on Facebook, said her daughter was in her final year at college where she was studying child care and was looking forward to a career as a child minder or nursery nurse.
'No one can imagine the hurt and devastation that has caused our family,' she said.'Ashleigh was loving, honest, caring and well-liked. 'Everybody loved her. She was a person who brought light into the lives of others.
'To have Ashleigh taken from us in such circumstances is beyond belief and I don't want other families to suffer what we are going through.
'All we ask now is that people help the police in any way they can. We don't want any other child to be a victim.'
In a separate message, posted on her Facebook site just hours after she learned of her daughter's death, she simply wrote: 'My beautiful daughter has been taken away from me.'
Unemployed drifter Peter Chapman, 32, is thought to have led police to Ashleigh's body on Monday evening after being arrested by traffic officers.
He appeared before Newton Aycliffe Magistrates' Court yesterday charged with killing the teenager, kidnap and failing to notify the police of a change of address as all sex offenders are required to do.
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