Eight-year-old boy 'hid knives near home to protect himself' from bullies in Leicester

'He'd been bullied before and said he took it to protect himself'

An eight-year-old boy has admitted hiding knives near his home in Leicester in case he was bullied.

The boy’s mother phoned the police after she realised he was taking knives from the kitchen drawer before going out.

The schoolboy took a family support worker to six locations where he had concealed the weapons “under bushes and bricks” in case he got “bullied”, the BBC reported.

“I had no idea he was taking them out until I saw him in the drawer one day before he was going out,” his 37-year-old mother said.

“I asked him what the hell he was doing and he said it was in case anyone started on him.

“He’d been bullied before and said he took it to protect himself. He said he wasn’t going to stab anyone, he’d just show it to them and then they’d leave him alone.”

The boy stopped carrying knives after help with a youth worker from the E2Training Centre in Beaumont Leys, Leicester.

His mother said that without youth worker Beth Wallace, “he would end up dead one day or in prison”.

She said she was determined her son would continue attending anti-knife sessions at the centre.

It comes as police forces in England and Wales launched a seven-day nationwide crackdown on knife crime, codenamed Operation Sceptre.

Officers will use a mix of surrender bins, stop-and-search powers and weapons sweeps following a series of fatal stabbings.

The killings sparked scrutiny of reductions in the size of the police workforce, which has fallen by more than 20,000 across the 43 forces in England and Wales since 2009.