Mobile station helps rape inquiry

Detectives investigating the rape of a 16-year-old girl in Northamptonshire have brought a mobile police station to the estate where she was attacked.

The incident, in Wellingborough on 15 January, was initially treated as a sexual assault but Northamptonshire Police said on Monday that the girl's ordeal was now being treated as rape.

The teenager was walking along Redhill Way between 2030 and 2100 GMT when she was grabbed.

She was forced into a nearby copse before being assaulted.

Boy questioned

Police have been carrying out house-to-house inquiries and hope a high profile operation, including the mobile police station, will jog the memories of potential witnesses.

The offender is described as a white man in his late teens or early 20s with a local accent.

He was skinny with dark hair and dark eyes and was wearing a dark-coloured hooded jacket with the hood pulled tightly around his faced and tied with a drawstring.

He was also wearing dark blue tracksuit trousers and dirty white trainers.

Police said they had interviewed a 17-year-old boy in connection with the incident but he was released without charge.