News of the accident involving father-of-one Joel Hulme, 19, from Swansea, broke first on the South Wales Evening Post website last weekend and soon began generating a large number of comments from friends who hailed the victim a hero.

The Evening Post then printed the story in last Monday’s paper, including some of those comments.

But the tale then took a fresh twist when, on Tuesday, the Post published a story revealing that the victim was understood to have been driving a stolen car.

This sparked a whole new wave of comments from people who questioned how the victim could be hailed a hero when he had been at the wheel of a stolen vehicle, in turn generating a fresh set of responses from Joel's friends.

It led to a front page splash last Thursday headlined "Divided City," pictured below, reflecting the division of opinion over the issue which has also mirrored the city's social divide.

Web content editor Paul Turner said: "This is the first time we have had an issue which has so divided opinion and sparked such an incredible response. The reaction to the story has revealed the power of a multimedia approach to presenting the news.

"It has also allowed teenagers and young adults who would never have dreamed of writing to a newspaper, to make their feelings known on an issue via the web."

Thursday's paper also included expert comment from a criminology professor and articles on the city’s joyriding past and present. The paper also re-printed dozens of comments that had been left by people on both sides of the debate.

So far, the stories have picked up more than 400 comments between them and counting. A sample of them can be read here.

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