A BOY of 12 has been suspended from St John's School, Marlborough, after holding a knife to the throat of a girl in the same year group.

The incident, which happened at the lower school in Chopping Knife Lane on Monday last week, has left the 12-year-old girl too frightened to leave her home, according to her parents.

Her mother told the Gazette: "She is terrified and traumatised and is finding it hard to talk to us about it.

"She is fine at home while we are around her but other than that she will not go out.

"She is too scared to sleep by herself and she has been having nightmares."

The mother said her daughter had still not been able to repeat to her family what the boy said to her as he held the penknife blade against the skin of her throat.

The girl's parents said they had told the school they were disgusted that although the incident occurred soon after their daughter got off her bus in the morning, they were not informed about it until the afternoon.

The boy, who comes from a village near Marlborough, is currently under exclusion from St John's.

The school called the police as soon as the girl told teachers what had happened. He was arrested for issuing a threat to kill and the incident has been investigated by officers, said the Marlborough area police commander, Insp Bill Dowling.

Insp Dowling said: "This seems to be a typical case of kids falling out but of one of them going too far."

The girl told police officers that as the boy came up behind her with the knife blade open he said: "Come near me again and I will kill you."

Teachers subsequently confiscated the knife which, said headteacher Patrick Hazlewood, had a blade about three-quarters of an inch long.

Insp Dowling said making a threat to kill was a very serious offence and police had treated it as such.

After taking statements from the boy and from the girl, said Insp Dowling, it had been decided not to take the case to court. Instead the boy has been given a final caution by officers and has been referred to the youth offending team for counselling.

The girl's mother told the Gazette the family was concerned that police had decided not to prosecute the boy.

She said: "We are really not at all happy with this decision. It was a very serious incident that has left my daughter extremely upset.

"He did threaten to kill her and she had a knife held to her throat. Fortunately she was too terrified to move because if she had moved, the knife could have gone into her."

Dr Hazlewood said the school was treating the matter very seriously and had called the police in the first place to carry out an investigation.

He said: "It was one of those silly childhood incidents in which a Year 7 boy held a small penknife against a girl's throat.

"He said to her something like 'Stay away from me, I don't like you any more'."

Dr Hazlewood said the boy was immediately excluded from school and would remain suspended pending the outcome of the police and school investigation.

He said: "It was the sort of incident that we cannot tolerate in school.

"You do not leave any stone unturned in investigating an incident like this because of the potential of what might have happened."

Dr Hazlewood said the boy involved had not been in any serious trouble at the school since arriving last September. "He is one of those little boys who gets into trouble occasionally for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time but nothing more than that."

The head said he was concerned that children occasionally tried to mimic incidents they had seen on TV, although that had not been put forward as an excuse for what happened.

Dr Hazlewood said: "We asked him for his reasons and he said 'I didn't mean it, I was just being silly and I shouldn't have done it'."

The boy's family declined to discuss the incident when approached by the Gazette but his mother said it had been blown up out of all proportion by "Chinese whispers" going around the school and town.

The girl's mother said she would be keeping her daughter at home until a decision was made about the boy's future at St John's.

She said: "If he is allowed back then my daughter will definitely not be going back. We are pushing to have him permanently excluded."