London - As always, it started with the best of intentions.
To celebrate his 16th birthday, Bradley McAnulty invited about 30 of his friends to his house for a party.
What happened next was a huge shock to him, if not to long-suffering parents throughout the country.
The £300,000 family home was trashed after news of the event was posted on Facebook and hundreds of gatecrashers turned up.
The unruly mob smashed a window, pulled the back door off its hinges, ripped down the sitting-room curtains, damaged the garden fence and wrecked a children’s outdoor playhouse at the four-bedroom house in Parkstone, Poole, Dorset.
Neighbours reported seeing youths jumping on cars and hurling beer cans, while three girls were seen urinating in a garden.
Police with dogs dispersed the crowd before arresting two boys, aged 16 and 17, for being drunk and disorderly.
Bradley’s father Michael, 48, had left his son and his friends alone with some beer for the birthday gathering at 7.30pm while he spent the evening at a nearby social club.
He rushed home at 10pm after calls from neighbours and spent all night clearing up the mess.
Bradley believes the party got so out of hand because news was spread of the “free house” via Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).
He said: “It started off with a few people bringing plus-ones and I didn’t see a problem with letting them in, but then a larger group turned up and I said no.
“They opened up the side gate without me knowing and from there people just kept coming in.
“After a while the street was full of people coming into this house and I kind of lost control of what happened. It was scary how quickly things can change.”
Mr McAnulty, a IT analyst who recently lost his job at Barclays Bank, said: “I told Bradley not to put it on Facebook and to tell his friends not to, so it wasn’t him.
“If it wasn’t for Facebook and BBM it wouldn’t have got out so quickly or to so many people.
Luckily nothing valuable was stolen as I had locked the bedrooms.
“At 16 they all think they should drink as much as they can as quickly as they can and that’s where it started going wrong.” - Daily Mail