Toddler pricked by syringe on footpath

A Masterton mother's worst nightmare has come true after her three-year-old son accidentally stabbed himself with a "druggie" syringe while outside playing.
The woman, who did not want to be named, said her son found the syringe while playing on the footpath outside her house in Colombo Road on Friday night. He pricked himself causing a pinprick size puncture in the skin.
His mother said the first thought that entered her head when her son walked into house carrying the soiled needle was that he might have contracted Aids.
"Honestly, I thought he's got Aids. I went through a panic attack," she said. She immediately rang the police who told her to take her son to the hospital accident and emergency department.
She said the boy's puncture wound was treated at hospital and the staff told her there was nothing they could do about checking for possible infection from the syringe, aside from going to see her GP in "a couple of months".
"They told me that there was 99.9 per cent chance that there would be nothing wrong," she said.
The mother of three said her fears that the needle had been used for something other than medical purposes were not helped when she saw what appeared to be blood in the syringe.
"They said it wasn't for insulin and when I asked if it could have been used for heroin or something, the nursed nodded," she said.
"They didn't go out of their way to reassure me. I was a bit crazy because I did jump to a million conclusions," she said.
The doctor told her tests would be of no use until two months had elapsed because any infection would not show up until then. She said her three-year-old was up to date with his immunisation shots.
The incident with the dirty syringe has destroyed her trust in the neighbourhood where she believed something like this could never happen.
"I just want to let people know that this is not just something that happens in CSI. It shouldn't matter where you live," she said.
"It's more like I want to move out of the neighbourhood. Truthfully, I don't even want to be in Masterton," she said.
She has various part time jobs and is the mother of three, and says the thing that bothers her the most is that she doesn't know who the syringe belongs to.
"I'm going crazy. I'm more worried about where it came from. I'm angry with the person that left it. I can't think of words to express how I feel," she said.
She said when she contacted police on Friday evening they didn't have forensic staff on, but they have since taken the syringe and are carrying out an analysis on it.