AN Army medic who crawled through a broken minibus window to treat and rescue a youngster has been praised by police.

Sergeant Michele Pownall, who works at the Army Foundation College in Harrogate, said she was returning from taking her daughter to a nursery when she saw a coach carrying schoolchildren and a minibus transporting a young boy and an adult had collided on the A59, outside Hampsthwaite, near Harrogate.

The 34-year-old alerted emergency services and found the 50 schoolchildren on the coach were uninjured before finding the child in the minibus, which was in a ditch and impossible to enter through its doors, appeared to have a head injury.

She said: "The emergency paramedics had arrived on the scene and with their agreement I covered the jagged glass of the window with a blanket from their ambulance and climbed inside.

"While the paramedics assessed the driver for injuries, I tried to calm and reassure the boy in the minibus and check out and treat his injuries."

North Yorkshire Police praised Sgt Pownall for her swift action to comfort the boy, whose injuries were later found not to be serious.

She said: “Due to the damage caused to the bus, the fire service had to extricate him, and a situation that could have been a hugely upsetting for him, was calmed thanks to Sgt Pownall’s quick thinking.”