A FIREFIGHTER had to jam on the brakes and swerve his 14-tonne engine to avoid a grinning schoolboy playing "chicken" on a Worcester road.

The shaken driver said that if he had not turned the right way when the teenager shot out in front of him on London Road, he would have hit the boy.

Two crews from Green Watch had been racing up the hill to a fire at the Morganite Crucible factory, in Norton Road, when the stunt was pulled just after 9pm on Friday night.

As the first engine travelled past the Mount Pleasant pub at around 50mph, the driver saw one of three boys hide between parked cars before jumping out in front of him.

"I had to brake and swerve around him," said the driver, who arrived at the factory in complete shock.

"He carried on running from right to left but if he had run back the same way, I would certainly have hit him.

"I saw him quite clearly with a big grin on his face."

The firefighter, from Warndon Villages, said the stunt could not only have endangered the boy, believed to be aged between 13 and 15, but the lives of five firefighters inside the engine.

"I missed him by inches and came extremely close to hitting the parked cars on the right hand side of the road," said the 32-year-old, who asked not to be named.

"When we arrived at the factory, which turned out to be a false alarm, I felt sick and my legs had turned to jelly. Without a shadow of a doubt, this was a deliberate act. He was playing chicken."

Alec Mackie, fire brigade spokesman, said the teenager was "utterly stupid".

"That's the nearest thing that lad's going to come to getting killed. And he brought the lives of the crew into jeopardy," he said.

"This isn't the first incident we've had in recent years. So far we've managed, through the skill of the drivers, to miss them."

n Opinion: P6