Two brothers at centre of probe into boys' attack

Two brothers being questioned in connection with an attack on two young boys had recently been placed in foster care, a council confirmed today.

The pair were held after a nine-year-old boy and his 11-year-old uncle were found with serious injuries in Edlington, Doncaster, on Saturday afternoon.

Detectives from South Yorkshire Police were granted an extension to continue quizzing the two suspects – aged 10 and 11 – yesterday afternoon.

Officers were alerted at 2pm on Saturday when the nine-year-old boy was found wandering, covered in blood, in Auburn Road.

The youngster told the people who found him where to find his 11-year-old friend and uncle, who was discovered semi-conscious in a nearby wooded ravine.

Local residents said the pair were attacked with a brick and slashed with a knife.

The attack was condemned as “shocking” by British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and Downing Street.

The 11-year-old boy was airlifted to Sheffield Children's Hospital in a critical condition after the attack.

Yesterday, he was said to be in a stable condition and had been taken off a ventilator and moved to a high-dependency ward.

People who helped the younger boy at the time said he was so covered in mud and dried blood it was impossible to see his skin but he had a very deep cut on his arm.

Today, the mother of another child who was attacked a week before Saturday’s assault spoke of her fears that the boys’ injuries could have been prevented.

Kerry Reynolds, 37, said she believed her son, Callam, had been beaten by the two boys being questioned by police.

Ms Reynolds said Callam returned home on March 28, bloodied and beaten, after a trip to the area where the two boys were attacked.

She said: “His face was unrecognisable, you couldn’t recognise it was him at all.

“They kicked him in the face, they punched him in the face, they stamped on him.

“He was bleeding from where his teeth had ripped the side of his mouth.”

Ms Reynolds said she called the police as soon as Callam returned home but officers did not visit until the next day and were then called away on another job.

She said they only seemed to begin investigating seriously a few days later.

Ms Reynolds claimed the two suspects were due to attend a police station on Saturday morning, the day of the attack on the two boys, but never turned up.

She said: “If only they’d listened to me in the first place, this might never have happened. It should have been prevented. They threatened to hit him over the head with a brick and throw him in the Brick Pond.”

Callam, who is a choirboy at St John’s Church in Edlington, said his attackers had asked to look at his football before luring him towards the pond by offering to show him a dead toad.

He said the boys attacked him for five or 10 minutes before he was rescued by a passer-by, who intervened and gave him time to get away.

Callam said the incident had left him traumatised and afraid to leave the house alone.