By DANIEL JACKSON
WHANGAREI - Her children playing with hypodermic syringes was the last thing Michele Roberts was expecting when she walked into the bathroom of her Kamo home yesterday.
Ms Roberts struggled to describe her horror at finding her sons, Mason, aged 10, Tyler, 7, and their friend Tom Halliday, 10, squirting water through syringes and needles they had found in a nearby creek while on the way home from school.
"To walk up the stairs and see the kids standing there with needles ... even if only a diabetic's ... "
Ms Roberts said the children had found a plastic container full of the syringes and needles in the creek beside Kamo Rd. After playing with them there, where one of the needles broke, they brought them home.
"They knew they were doing something wrong because they sort of snuck upstairs when they got home," she said.
She went to investigate and found the children were using them like water pistols.
Tom and Mason had said they did not squirt the water at each other and were not pricked by the needles, but Ms Roberts said she would have the boys tested - "for things like hepatitis ... God knows what was in them."
St John Ambulance officers had checked the children and police were investigating the syringes' origin. Ms Roberts said that the needles should have been disposed of properly.
"Who would leave needles lying around? Kids will find these things."
Senior Sergeant Steve Rudsdale, of Whangarei, said that such a find was unfortunately not uncommon.
"As a matter of course, we will get them analysed but it's not that unusual for these things to be discarded around the place," he said.
Northland Health communications manager Luke Worth said the syringes could have come from any number of sources.
"They could have been disposed of properly by someone and someone else has gone through the rubbish and stolen them."
Mother finds boys playing with needles
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