A teenager's leg was crushed after a garden wall collapsed on top of him.

Mark Pearce, 13, was "horsing about" with school friend Darren Jaggard, 14, when he tripped and fell on the pavement in Merritt Road, Didcot.

Darren told the Oxford Mail that as his friend "tried to pull himself on to his feet holding on to the top of the wall, it gave way and fell on top of him".

The wall in front of Beverley Arnold's home was only 1ft 9in high, but it broke on Mark's legs shattering at least two bones in his right leg and covering him in rubble.

A paramedic crew took Mark to the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, where he was operated on.

His parents Sidney and Stella Pearce, of Mereland Road, Didcot, said the youngster emerged from the operating theatre "with so many steel pins holding his leg together that it looked like a scaffold".

A second operation was necessary to close part of a surgical wound - and Mark spent part of Monday in theatre for further surgery including skin grafts.

Darren, of Freeman Road, Didcot, said he had cleared rubble from on top of Mark's leg before the injured youngster hobbled to his feet after the accident.

Mrs Arnold, who is a youth worker and a member of the learning support team at St Birinus School where Mark and Darren are pupils, heard Mark screaming and dashed out of the house.

Vince Ellis, South Oxfordshire District Council's dangerous structures officer, said: "I don't think the wall was unsafe from being blown down by wind. It was accidentally pulled over."

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