Rider in hospital after hitting booby-trap

A teenage trials bike rider has been badly injured by a wire booby-trap strung between two trees.

Ben Carrington has been unable to speak after his voicebox was crushed by the wire and he stopped breathing. Carrington has had delicate surgery to repair his damaged throat and has to be fed through a tube.

The 17-year-old had been riding with friend Ian Hopkinson at a railway cutting in Goldthorpe, South Yorkshire, when he hit the booby-trap. Hopkinson cleared his friend’s airway and restored his breathing before riding half a mile to a farmhouse to call an ambulance.

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