PARENTS are being warned to be wary at the children’s playground at The Rec in Wellington after a dad and mum visiting with their young son found part of a used syringe there.

John Kitchen, of Laburnum Road in the town, was at The Rec with his son Thomas, aged two-and-a-half, and wife Emmalwhen he spotted the object.

He said the family then found dog mess in the children’s sandpit after a council worker had taken the piece of syringe away.

Mr Kitchen said: “My wife and I often take our little boy down to the playground. We had been there a little while and I saw something on the ground, wondered what it was and on closer inspection it looked like the cap off a syringe.

“We saw a man from Taunton Deane Borough Council painting one of the bridges in the park and he came along and cleared it up.

“Someone has been using a syringe in the kids’ playground area – I hope there’s not a needle lying around somewhere. The guy from Taunton Deane had a scour around and couldn’t see anything immediately.

“Then two seconds later there’s a pile of dog mess in the sandpit. The two things you don’t want to find in a kids’ playground are used syringes – or bits of used syringes – and dog mess, and in the space of five minutes we found both.”

Mr Kitchen said the family had been going to The Rec for about 18 months and had not had problems before.

“We are concerned and want people to be wary – in the past on a hot day our son has gone barefoot in that sandpit,” he added. “Dog mess is one thing but if someone has left a sharp object in there like a needle and scrapes themselves it doesn’t bare thinking about. It’s disgusting, it’s the last place you want something like this to happen.”

He said he would be a lot more careful on visits to The Rec and criticised anyone who has been using drugs in the playground. “I think drug users are scum if they are doing that there,” he said. “There’s plenty of other places they can go and there’s plenty of ways of disposing of the bits and pieces they need.

“They should do what they are doing somewhere else, away from where kids are playing. A little kid could have picked that up, put it in their mouth, done anything. It’s not an acceptable place to do that.

“If a child gets spiked by something you would have months and months of worry having the child tested for any number of different diseases.”