National News
A horrified mum has told how a foot-long RAT savaged her 16-month-old daughter as she lay sleeping in her cot.
Lindsey Molyneux, 30, heard her daughter Lolly wake up screaming and went to check on her to find the little girl covered in blood with deep bite marks on her hand and her pyjama pants chewed through.
Lolly's dad, Michael, 41 then spotted the rat scurrying around their one bedroom flat in Camden, north London.
In a story that's reminiscent of the babies attacked by foxes in their cots, Lindsey told the Camden New Journal: "They went down to bed at about 8.15pm and it was about 9pm because I'm a Celebrity was just about to come on.
"So we were waiting for that and she just started crying through the monitor. I went in because I didn't want her to wake her twin Lily up.
"I went in there and she was shaking and I thought maybe she was just having one of her nightmares.
"She threw up on my shoulder so I walked her out of the bedroom, holding her over my left shoulder, sat her down on the floor on the kitchen and as I started to strip her I saw all the blood because I hadn't seen it in the bedroom because it was dark.
"I just started screaming, I tried not to swear but every swear word was coming out of my mouth.
"I said 'she's bleeding, she's bleeding'. I couldn't see where she was bleeding from, then I suddenly saw her hand, you could just see that it was gushing out.
"The only way I could describe it is we were just befuddled, we just could not figure out what had happened. We've got no pets and there's nothing around her bed that could do that."
As she got on the phone to NHS Direct, she saw the rat scurry past.
"I saw it at the door and it was about a foot long," said Lindsey. "I just started screaming down the phone at this poor woman, 'there's a rat'. The nurse said 'okay you need to take her to A&E'.
"As I got off the phone, my husband ended up getting the broom. I went around the patio door, opened up the front door and as soon as I opened it up, it legged it.
"You could clearly see it was a rat, the size of it was massive."
Lindsey said her GP didn't believe the story until she showed footage filmed by her husband on his phone.
The couple have since disinfected and cleaned the entire flat, while pest control experts from Camden council have laid traps and checked nearby sewers.
Lindsey said the front door had been left open for half an hour earlier in the night to ventilate the house while her husband, an engineer, cooked dinner, but pest controllers were still unsure how the rat got in.