A SCREAMING youngster, trapped inside a runaway car hurtling down a hill, was saved by a council worker just seconds from disaster.

Dave Spearpoint came to the rescue as the Vauxhall Zafira careered towards a house, and a parked car, after its handbrake was inadvertently released at the top of hilly Holly Walk.

The black people carrier rolled down the WGC road, at about 25mph, crashing into vehicles on its way down.

Two children, aged five and eight, managed to jump out but another, aged nine, was still inside when Dave leapt into action.

The modest Welwyn Hatfield Council worker shook his head as colleagues hailed him a hero.

He said: “I’m still a bit shook up by it. I just heard the kids screaming and then it was a natural reaction.

“I can’t really remember what happened, I got up on the side of it and slowed it down, I think after it hit our van it slowed it down a little.”

However co-worker Stuart Hart, who watched the incident from the top of scaffolding, added it was a “brilliant” act.

“I heard a scream and turned to see the car rolling down the hill backwards. I saw the children screaming for their lives, it was terrible, the look on their faces was as if they were going to die.

“I don’t know how Dave managed to stop it by himself, it was brilliant!”

The youngsters’ mum, who didn’t want to be identified, was dropping her children off at a friend’s home.

As she went to get them out she felt the car roll and was helpless to stop it.

She told the Welwyn Hatfield Times: “One of my daughters has a thing about the handbrake and naughtily she managed to release it.

“I was screaming at them to pull the handbrake up, but they jumped out.

“Then from nowhere he [Dave] managed to stop it, inches before it hit the car at the bottom of the hill.”

She added: “If he wasn’t there it would have been totally different; I think it would have hit another car and gone through the house at the bottom. God knows what would have happened to my eldest.

“We were very lucky, if another car drove past or someone had been walking past it could have been disastrous.”