A BOY knocked from his bicycle and seriously hurt in a collision with a motorcycle is home from hospital after three months.

David Gallagher, 12, suffered serious head injuries in the accident, which happened as he helped a friend with a paper round.

David, of Faringdon Road, Swindon, has spent the last three months at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, Swindon's Princess Margaret and Great Western hospitals, and latterly the Bath unit for children with head injuries.

But now he is home with his family.

His mother, Carol Tilden, said: "I am delighted. I don't really know what to say. The whole thing has been very difficult but now I feel I can look at it a little more calmly. It has been very difficult and exhausting for the whole family, but we are all just glad that David is home."

The accident happened as Commonweal school pupil David cycled up Kingshill Road on Decem-ber 3.

His friend Simon, whose paper round he was helping with, was unhurt but very distressed.

Throughout his time in hospital, David has been supported by friends and staff at Commonweal school, who have held special assemblies for him, prayed for him, and sent him in home made get well cards.

Teacher Jeff Nichols, 58, is head of David's house Stonehenge and has been in close contact with the family throughout.

He said: "David is a lovely lad and I know all his friends have been really missing him.

"It has been touch and go for David for quite a while, and even after he came round from his coma he was rushed back into intensive care twice with pneumonia, which was very serious for him."

At the end of January, Mr Nichols went into the Great Western Hospital to present David with a certificate for the one hundred house points he had earned from the school.

He said: "It was wonderful to be able to present the certificate to David and see him on the mend. He still gets tired very easily, but when I went in to give him the certificate he was back to being the David I knew."