Grandma's horror at jotter with 4in blade

Published on Friday 27 November 2009 08:40

A GRANDMOTHER who bought a Christmas stationery set for her grandson was horrified when she opened it to find a razor-sharp four-inch blade inside.

Elizabeth Borthwick, 46, bought the set for Ryan Wilson, who is almost two, and gave him the scribble pad and crayons to play with.

She and Ryan's mum Kerrie Kinghorn, 25, sat down on the living room floor to doodle on the pad with him and were stunned to see the craft knife blade stuck inside.

Home help Ms Borthwick said: "He flipped the book over and there was a four-inch blade stuck to the book. It's like a Stanley knife blade and there's Sellotape wrapped round the bottom.

"Myself and my daughter-in-law couldn't believe it. We looked at each other in pure shock.

"If we hadn't been sitting there, he would have picked it up and his fingers would have been cut to shreds."

She added: "Both ends of the box were taped down with Sellotape and I had to break it with my nails to get the books out, so I don't think it had been tampered with in the shop."

After the find at their home in Prestonfield on Wednesday afternoon they took the pack to the police and were advised to return it to Londis on Niddrie Mains Road, where they had bought it.

The store manager, David Mullholland, said he was horrified to hear about the blade and had immediately removed the rest of the packs from sale.

"I was shocked – obviously my concern was for the wee one," he said.

"It comes in boxed from our wholesalers, I've phoned them and told them what happened and they said they don't really know where the blade would have come from. We've got safety cutters here, so it can't be from us.

"Everything that we've removed from the shelf we opened as well, to double check, and there's nothing in the rest of the packs."

Ms Kinghorn, who is a sales assistant, said: "I was just really shocked, I didn't think that anything like that would have been in a kids' package.

"We just didn't know what to do.

"We had to take it off Ryan and he didn't understand, so he was really upset.

"It definitely not something that would have been lying in the house. He literally had it five minutes and it was my mother-in-law that opened it and gave it to him."

The pack was produced by RMS UK Ltd, which is based in Manchester.

The company's quality control manager, David Beaumont, said he would be contacting the manufacturers in China.

He told the Evening News: "Obviously one issue like this is one too many but we do sell hundreds and hundreds of thousands of different items every year and this is the first complaint we've had about a blade in a product this year.

"I only remember one previous incident, some time ago.

" It's a terrible thing to happen with these products, but because of the nature of the beast it will, one time in a million, happen."