A BOY of 13 armed himself with a knife before getting involved in a street fight in Barrow, a court heard.

South Cumbria Youth Court was told the teenager had been drinking alcohol with a 15-year-old boy in a bedroom on the night of July 13 when a row erupted between the pair.

The argument between the boys, who cannot be named for legal reasons, moved downstairs and into the kitchen where both armed themselves with knives.

The court was told they went outside onto a residential street in Ormsgill where they hurled threats and attempted to stab one another.

A terrified member of the public who saw the pair on Chester Place tried to intervene and pleaded with the boys to drop the knives before they both fled the scene.

Appearing in court on Friday the 13-year-old boy pleaded guilty to possessing a knife in a public place and was given a 10-month youth offender panel order.

Magistrates told the boy if he had been an adult there would have been no doubt he would have been jailed.

The 15-year-old boy is due to be sentenced on August 16.

Ormsgill Councillor Bill McEwan described the incident as ‘utterly shocking’.

“Where were the parents when this was going on?” he asked.

“How on earth have these boys got alcohol and have then been left unsupervised?

“To think this is happening on the streets of Barrow is utterly shocking.

“I’m disgusted.

“The sentence seems like a slap on the wrists and they’ll think they’ve got away with it.”

The former mayor’s concerns were echoed by Cumbria’s Police and Crime Commissioner Peter McCall.

“We live in a world where people default to thinking the police can fix everything but this is a case where young kids are left unsupervised.

“While the police have to deal with the aftermath we need to prevent these things from happening in the first place and that is the role of a parent.

“Sadly too many parents, for all sorts of reasons, are just not giving their kids the right guidance and the right upbringing.

“There does come a point with youngsters like this where if they aren’t sorted out at an early stage they will probably end up going on to more serious crime and finding themselves locked up.

“And frankly I, and I suspect the community will be the same, will have little sympathy for them when that happens.”

The Ben Kinsella Trust was set up to tackle knife crime following the murder of the 16-year-old in London in 2008.

His sister Eastenders actress, Brooke Kinsella said: “For a while, efforts to tackle knife crime seemed to be working. But since 2014 it has been a very different story.

"Last year was the worst for knife crime since 2010 and the awful carnage on our streets has continued into 2019.”