SICK vandals have set fire to a shrine dedicated to the memory of a Great Harwood teenager.

Floral tributes, photos, mementos and hundreds of messages had been left at the spot where Jake Boswell died three months ago.

But yobs have ruined the makeshift memorial by pouring petrol on it and setting it alight.

His mum Debbie Maddick, who keeps the shrine in woodlands at Clayton Fields, off Alan Ramsbottom Way, said she was devastated by the attack.

Scorch marks around six feet high have destroyed many of the handwritten tributes on the white wall and the flames melted a picture of Jake, drawn by one of his sisters.

Debbie, 42, said: “I am absolutely distraught. It’s heart-breaking.

“Whoever has done this has known what they were doing.

“This isn’t the work of a child messing around.

"They must have brought petrol down here because there has been so much rain that most of the stuff here was soaking wet and it wouldn’t have caught fire.

“It’s smashed the glass and melted metal because it was so hot.

“Underneath all the black marks is writing from my family who came up from Oxfordshire.

"That will never be there again.

“It feels like I’m back on the April 20 again, when Jake died, having to come down here and see this.

“Why would anyone want to do this? What have they achieved out of it?”

More than 350 people attended the popular former Blackburn College pupil’s funeral at St Bartholemew’s Church.

His mum said many had contacted her on Facebook to say how upset and angry they were about the desecration of Jake’s memorial.

She said both council workers and the police had told her they would leave the area alone and not treat the writing on the walls as graffiti.

Debbie said the area had become a focal point for hundreds of people wishing to remember her son’s life.

The mum-of-six said: “There are bottles here that look like rubbish, but his friends have brought them down, drunk half and left the other half for Jake.

“This is like knocking over somebody’s headstone. I’ve got his ashes so he hasn’t got a grave, and people used this place instead to pay respect.”

Debbie’s friend Pat Mayor, 57, lives in the same street and visits the site regularly to help keep it tidy.

She said: “This is like Jake’s grave and we all come down here.

“It’s been a nice place for the kids to come to and both our daughters come down here most days.

“If these people only knew what hurt they had caused.

“What they have done is evil. Absolutely evil.”

Pat’s daughter Ebony, 16, was Jake’s girlfriend for nearly three years.

She said: “It’s horrible. Whoever has done it must want to get at his mum.”

At the time of his death, Jake’s family said they were shocked he had taken his own life.

They said he had experienced troubled times in his mid-teens, but over the past year had turned his life around.

Debbie said: “I don’t know what I could have done to anybody to deserve this, I really don’t.

“It’s three months today since he died. Why can’t people just leave me alone to grieve?”

Police said they had been informed about the attack and they would be speaking to Jake’s family about investigating the incident.