Finding the boy I SAVED

Audrey Mulrooney, 82, had always wondered what happened to the lad whose life she’d saved 40 years earlier

- KARA O’NEILL, EMIKA BERRY

It was a warm summer’s afternoon in 1979 when Audrey Mulrooney, then 41, was on her way to visit her daughter in hospital.

She’d just been to a friend’s wedding and was heading to Tynemouth station in North Shields to catch a train when she spotted a little boy in trouble at a turnstile.

‘I ran straight over to him, he was wriggling and crying out for help,’ the retired sewing machinist says.

The boy told Audrey his name was Will and that he had been trying to get under the turnstile at the station to pick up a ticket discarded by a passenger.

‘He liked to collect tickets,’ Audrey explains. ‘But he’d slipped and got himself stuck in the tiny gap between the metal railings.’

Thinking quickly, Audrey grabbed hold of his legs to take the pressure off his head and neck.

‘He was stuck fast, and the bars were almost choking him, but I couldn’t pull him out,’ Audrey says.

‘He kept drifting in and out of consciousness. I remember thinking how tiny and helpless he looked. He couldn’t have been much older than seven or eight.’

Audrey tried desperately to keep little Will awake until, by sheer good fortune, a doctor exited the station and rushed over to help.

‘I asked Will where he lived, what he’d been doing over the weekend – anything to try to keep him talking.

‘The doctor told me, “You’ve saved this boy’s life,”’ Audrey remembers. ‘I’m not sure I took in what he was saying at the time. I was just doing my bit.’