SUPERMARKET manager Alan Martin has described vandals who left a live electricity wire across a riverside path in Marlborough as mindless morons.

Mr Martin is manager of the Waitrose supermarket whose extended car park, opened a year ago, stretches from the back of the store to the River Kennet.

Following complaints shortly after the opening of the car park about a lack of lighting on the footpath along the riverbank to Kennet Place, Waitrose paid for temporary lighting to be fitted to a wall.

Overnight on Thursday last week vandals ripped the light fittings from the wall and left them, together with a live cable, across the footpath which children use on their way to school.

Mr Martin said that fortunately the hazard was spotted before children used the path. He arranged for an electrician to attend and make the wiring safe. He said: "It was a case of sheer and utterly senseless vandalism."

The shop manager said there has been a spate of vandalism recently in the town centre by what he referred to as "mindless morons."

He said flower displays had been damaged and trolleys had been taken from the car park and thrown into the river.