A TERRIFIED schoolboy had to be hauled to safety after sinking to his waist in a muddy lodge as he took a short cut home.

And today Adam Ashworth's mum praised his two rescuers and claimed her son could have remained stranded all night if they hadn't spotted him struggling to free himself.

Tracey has vowed to find out why the drained lodge behind Ormerod Street, Accrington, wasn't fenced off.

Adam, of Bullough Close, Accrington, was on his way home from Peel Park Junior School, Manor Street, at 3.30pm yesterday when he decided to walk across the old lodge.

He said: "I thought it was concrete all the way across but it was mud. I started going down and then I fell in it."

Dale Moore, of Hopwood Street, Accrington, looked out of the canteen window at nearby SDL Trophies and saw Adam struggling to get free about ten yards from the edge. He called his friend Russell Nicol, of Elmfield Street, Church, and ran outside.

Dale said: "He was up to his waist and sinking as we got to him. He was screaming and we told him not to panic and not to thrash about.

"We had to pull a fence down to get wood to lie on top of the mud. I pulled and he wriggled his legs and I got him out."

The men carried Adam, who had lost both trainers, back to SDL Trophys and drove him home.

Mum Tracey said: "He was absolutely covered in mud, crying and absolutely freezing. I ran him a bath and I thought I had stopped him crying but when I went to get him some clean clothes, he started again. He's a tough nut, you can't make him cry. That's what got to me most of all.

"God only knows what could have happened to him if they hadn't looked out of the window."

Tracey had assumed he had called at his aunt's and said she wouldn't have started looking for him until 4.30pm.

"It would have been dark by then and I would never have thought of looking there. He could have been stuck there all night, or worse."

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