POLICE armed with submachine guns sealed off a Birmingham park after a man wielding a chainsaw threatened to cut the legs off a group of young children as they played hide and seek.
The youngsters were looking for hiding places in Queen’s Park, Harborne when they stumbled across the man lurking in the bushes.
He was holding a chainsaw and threatened to attack them unless they gave him food.
The terrified children ran away and called the police, who sealed off the park. Cops turned up clutching Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns, which fire more than 700 rounds a minute.
After a search, a man was held in the grounds of nearby Baskerville School, and found to be a workman who pleaded that he had only been playing a prank on the kids.
One of the children caught up in the scare was 11 year-old Oscar McNaughton, from Harborne, who was in the park for summer holiday fun with his friends.
Last night, his father Andrew said: “They were playing hide and seek and went into the bushes where there was a wire fence separating the park from Baskerville School. “That’s when they saw the man. He was holding a chainsaw and threatened to cut their legs off, saying: ‘I’m going to have you unless you give me your food’.
“Oscar and his friends ran off but then went back a few minutes later to see if the man had gone – but he was still there and threatened them again with the chainsaw.
Mr McNaughton said his son then used the mobile phone he had been given just a month previously for emergencies, to ring 999.
“Within minutes there were several uniformed police on the scene,” he said. “Then the armed response unit turned up with officers carrying MP5 submachine guns.
“They evacuated that part of the park and began a search of the school grounds.”
A West Midlands Police spokeswoman said a man had been arrested in the grounds of Baskerville School on Tuesday last week. “Officers attended the scene and spoke with a man. After talking to him they established what had happened, and no further action was taken.”
She said the man was believed to be a council workman who appeared to have done it as a prank to scare the children.
Birmingham City Council is investigating if the workman was employed by them, and may take further action.
Mr McNaughton, a project manager for an IT company, said he was proud of the way his son and his friends had reacted to the incident.
“I’d only bought him the phone a month before because he’s left Harborne Primary and is starting at King Edward’s Camp Hill in September,” he said. “I felt he needed a phone.
“The whole purpose of letting him go and play in the park on his own with his mates was to get him used to being independent ahead of going to senior school – but this wasn’t what I had in mind! He was very calm when he rang 999 and told the operator exactly where they were, and what the situation was.”
Mr McNaughton and his wife Roz, both aged 43, who have one other son, Louis, aged 13, said it was “foolish and stupid” of the council workman to have played such a prank on young children.
This is the calibre of Birmingham City Council Employees?
We pay our council tax for these people, therefore WE PAY THEIR WAGES.
They should therefore be accountable to us, and not to some un-elected bureaucrat!
