A woman has spoken of the moment her five-year-old son found a large knife under his seat on a National Express coach.
Emma Jones, 31, from Burnage , said her son Alfie discovered the weapon during their coach ride from Blackpool to Manchester on the morning of Monday, July 29.
“We were asleep, I needed to go to the toilet and when I came back, he was holding a knife,” she said.
“He said to me: ‘Mummy, I’ve found a knife’. I asked him where he found it and he said he just pulled it out from underneath the seat. It was massive, I was in shock.”
Jones said that she alerted the driver of the coach, who said he would take the weapon to the depot.
She also contacted police about the incident but claims she was told they couldn’t do anything.
The company has since said incidents like this are very rare.
However, Emma said she was angry and relieved no harm came to her child.
“With all these stabbings going on at the moment, I dread to think what that knife was doing on a coach in the first place,” she said.
“In this day and age, it’s scary to think what could have happened.
"My son could have sat on it and it would have cut through him.
“I hope the CCTV was working so that they can find out how it got there."
Jones said there were other passengers on the coach, but she didn’t want to make a scene about the discovery to avoid upsetting her son.
“I was surprisingly calm about it all, I was just so shocked. I just handed it over.
“You never know what could have happened in the hands of a five-year-old – it could have been a completely different story.”
"It just shouldn’t have happened" she added.
A spokesperson from National Express said: "We can confirm a passenger handed a knife over to the driver on the 328 service travelling between Blackpool and Plymouth on Monday 29 July 2019.
"The Police were notified and the item was disposed of safely.
"All of our vehicles are regularly checked and any items left by passengers are dealt with accordingly.
"Any incidents involving dangerous items are rare and taken very seriously."
