A teenage falconer is lucky to be alive after cheating death by inches when a bulldozer ran over her.

Nineteen-year-old Claire Taylor, of Frating Road, Great Bromley, was crushed when she was scaring birds from a landfill site at Bellhouse Pit, Stanway but escaped with just a broken right leg.

"I am extremely lucky and I just have a fracture in my right shin," said Claire today.

"I was scaring away birds because it was too wet to use the birds of prey. I must have strayed into the path of the bulldozer and it knocked me over and ran over my legs.

"I didn't see it or hear it either because I was blowing my whistle."

She said she was lying under the left blade of the 20-tonne machine and praised the quick reactions of the driver and other staff who saved her life.

Claire is due to have her leg X-rayed again on Thursday at Colchester General Hospital and is likely to have her leg in plaster for six weeks.

She will then have physiotherapy before returning to work at Colchester firm MAN Pest Control.

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