Lincoln: Man seen dumping memorial poppy wreaths in river

The poppy wreaths were taken from Lincoln's war memorial and dumped into the River Witham

A man has dumped more than 20 poppy wreaths placed at Lincoln's war memorial into a river, police said.

Officers said CCTV operators alerted them to the incident in the city centre at 04:00 BST on Tuesday.

All the wreaths laid at the memorial were thrown from High Bridge into the River Witham, where they were later recovered by council staff.

The man was seen returning to the memorial "multiple times" to gather more wreaths, said Lincolnshire Police.

Council staff found the wreaths downstream and cleaned them up, before returning them to the memorial.

Lincolnshire Police said the man's actions constituted both criminal damage and a public order offence and investigations were continuing.

Officers are "following a number of lines of enquiry to establish who is responsible for this offence" and have urged anyone with information to come forward.