A MUM has made a desperate plea for youngsters to take care after her teenage son suffered a serious leg injury after jumping off a 15ft wall into the sea.

Charlie Emslie was out with his friends on Wednesday evening when the group decided to start jumping into the water from Millom sea wall.

Despite being a popular pastime of young people in the town, things quickly went wrong for the 15-year-old when he landed in shallow water and badly damaged his leg.

As Charlie lay in agony, his mother Jeanette received a knock on her door, in Munroe Avenue, and was told to hurry down to the scene.

She said: “I had been in the shower and left my phone downstairs but my neighbour came over and said I needed to get dressed and come down to the sea wall.

“I just thought ‘what’s happened?’ - I was petrified.”

Mrs Emslie raced to the scene and had to walk along the two-foot-wide wall to reach her son.

She said: “It’s a high wall - it’s only about two-foot wide. I was frightened walking along it let alone jumping off it.”

With the help of his friends and other members of the community, the small party waited for the ambulance which took two hours to drive from Ulverston.

On arrival, the ambulance was unable to reach the party directly, so Haverigg Inshore Rescue and the Coastguard were called upon to deliver Charlie safely by boat before he was taken to Furness General Hospital by the ambulance.

Mrs Emslie said: “Charlie was very brave. He is very, very tough and he has no fear but he was in a lot of pain.

“All his friends were amazing though - they’re a great bunch of kids and the ambulance service was brilliant - I can’t thank them enough.

“All the emergency services were great: the coastguard and the inshore rescue team were fantastic.”

While she is immensely grateful for the support from people around her, Mrs Emslie has been shocked by the incident and believes it provides a stark warning for people across the town.

She said: “The youngsters are always going down there when it’s good weather - it’s one of the first places they go to. I’ve told him over and over again not to go but what can we do?

“Next time it could be life-threatening, definitely. I think we all just want the youngsters to realise that it’s really dangerous.

“I told and told and told Charlie not to but they still do. Perhaps there needs to be some sort of permanent barrier there to make it more difficult because at the moment it’s very, very easy for them to get there.”

Mrs Emslie pleaded with young people across the area not to put themselves at risk.

She said: “Please don’t put your parents through the scare that we had last night. Luckily Charlie has only got a badly damaged leg but that’s all and he will live to tell the tale.”