A COUNCILLOR has told how she was subjected to a “horrible” death threat by a cowardly internet troll.

Councillor Hannah Campbell, a Conservative in Malvern, has been on the receiving end of vile abuse on social networking site Twitter.

The poster’s motivation appears to be an old news story from June 2015 about a row involving the removal of a child’s grave’s headstone.

Under an anonymous Twitter feed the abuser, who has left messages using the pseudonym ‘capitalism rocks’, says “all at Malvern Town Council” are “thieving scum who should be killed”.

Another post directed straight to Councillor Campbell says “you people are thieves, scum, you should be killed”.

Councillor Campbell, who sits on the district and town councils in Malvern, says she has blocked the Twitter user.

She said: “I’ve often said that if you put yourself into the public eye and make choices that affect other people’s lives, you have to accept that not everyone is going to like you for it.

“But at such a local level of town council, however, I did not consider that my life could be threatened by a complete stranger in a very public sphere.

"I will not respond to death threats over Twitter regardless of the issue.”

Back in June 2015, the town council took down a headstone on the grave of a child because its appearance was considered unsuitable.

Despite the issue being resolved many months ago the Twitter troll, who calls himself or herself ‘a Glaswegian’, appears to have only targeted the council now after an international news website based in the USA re-reported it.

The targeting has also angered community leaders, who have called it “horrible”.

Councillor Julian l’Anson, mayor of Malvern, said: “It is horrible – we are all human beings and only ever do our best for our community.

"These sort of threats are not very nice at all.”

Councillor Ian Hopwood, a town, district and county councillor said: “It is outrageous."

“We should find some method of controlling people from doing this sort of thing, but how we do that I don’t know.

“They are picking up on something which is old and has now been resolved.”

An anti online abuse charity called ‘Ditch the Label’ said internet trolling is a serious issue.

Liam Hackett, chief executive of anti-online abuse charity Ditch the Label, said: “People can be prosecuted for making death threats on the internet.

"It’s very serious and one of the biggest problems we have with the technological revolution online."