Browse Sections

• Education
• Special reports

Teenage girl in leg horror accident

by Eve Dugdale
17/ 9/2008

A BARMAID has spoken of the horrifying moment she tended to a schoolgirl whose leg had been "sliced through".

Tammy Smith, who works at the Prince of Wales pub on Milltown off High Street East, said she had just shut the pub door at around 4.20pm last Tuesday when she heard a scream.

"I thought it was just kids walking home but then I heard voices saying ‘we need beer towels, there’s a girl been hit’.  I got the beer towels, the girl was laying on the floor," she said.

It was thought the girl, a 14-year-oldpupil at St Philip Howard, had been impaled on a fork lift truck.

Tammy added: "She wasn’t impaled when I got there but she may have been at some stage. I phoned the police and ambulance and there were some lads around helping. The girl had been walking home from school with her friends. It was horrific, her leg was sliced in half, her calf was hanging out.   I put towels on her and sat with her until her mum came. I just kept telling her to take deep breaths, but she was so scared, she kept saying ‘I’m going to lose my leg.’

"I was a care assistant at Shire Hill so I thought I might have been able to help out.  I’ve heard she’s had two operations and I’ve phoned the hospital and left my number but I don’t know how she is now.  It must have been so traumatic for her, her first day back at school and I just hope to God she’s on the mend."

The road was closed until around 8pm following the incident. It is understood that the Volcrepe mill site at the end of the road was being cleared.

Wendy Steciuk, headteacher at St Philip Howard, went to visit her pupil in hospital on Sunday.

She said: "She is a lovely kid, a hardworking girl, a sweet girl who is very well known at the school. A lot of the kids were upset to hear about the way it happened."