There has been a huge response to our stories following the murder of teenager Jimmy Mizen on Saturday.

Hundreds of comments have been posted on News Shopper’s website. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, many of them have overstepped the mark of what is appropriate and have had to be removed.

Around 90 per cent of the comments removed have been deleted for being blatantly racist.

It has clearly been stated there is no racial element to Jimmy’s killing, and no official mention has been made yet of the murder suspect’s race. But this has not stopped too many people jumping to wild conclusions and coming up with outrageous conspiracy theories.

There have been a lot of comments about ‘black’ crime – some people claiming ALL murders are committed by black youths and others saying all black youths are involved in gangs, guns and general crime. This racial stereotyping disgusts me. It also disturbs me that there are clearly a lot of people out there who are not quite right in the head.

One woman wrote how she initially assumed it was a black teenager who had been killed, and she was uninterested in the story. As horrible as this comment was, there have been far worse on the website over the past few days.

Whether they are active members of far-right parties or just sympathisers to these parties’ causes, there are a lot of people with seriously warped minds and some very hardened prejudices.

Some of them are local and others come from further afield. These people crawl out from under their rocks at every opportunity, pouncing on any chance to spread their race-based, hate-filled filth.

Unfortunately there is a lot of ignorance out there and some people will fail to see through this propaganda. Worse is that a lot of people will believe the rubbish and be encouraged to add their own racist views, which just adds fuel to the fire.

A healthy debate on the merits or otherwise of immigration is one thing but when people base their comments purely on skin colour, regardless of nationality, it is unacceptable. The idea of any sort of racial superiority or inferiority is just wrong.

Just as inevitable as the removal of comments from the website is the cries of “why are my comments being deleted?” and “stop removing my comments, I’ve done nothing wrong.”

If you have written something racist then you will know full well why your comments have been removed.

However, I can sympathise with some people being confused about seeing their comments disappear.

Sometimes people who make valid comments in a debate either refer to other people’s comments or quote what other people have written.

When the earlier comments are removed for being inappropriate, anything which refers back to them or quotes them also has to be removed – partly because the debate would not make any sense otherwise, but also because it would be pointless removing bad comments if they are still there for people to read further on in the thread.

This causes some understandable frustration for certain people trying to post reasonable views on a story, but it has to be done.