THE leader of BCP Council has spoken of her shock after a man threatened to punch her 14-year-old son as the teenager cycled home from school.

Cllr Vikki Slade said son Isaac, a student at QE School in Wimborne, was cycling the six miles home when he realised he had a slow puncture close to the Post Office in the High Street.

As a result, he began riding his bike on the pavement instead of the road.

He called out to two pedestrians in front of him, asking for them to excuse him as he rode past, but one of the walkers turned and threatened to punch him in the face if he didn’t cycle in the road.

Cllr Slade said: “He was threatened with being punched off his bike.

“He had a puncture and it was safer for him to go slowly on the pavement.

“He was coming down by the sorting office and he was on the pavement with two people in front of him.

“He called out to them ‘Excuse me’ so he could get past them and the guy turned around and says, ‘If you don’t get in the road, I’ll punch you off your bike’.”

Cllr Slade says all of her children cycle the six miles to and from school each day.

“Isaac would normally have been riding his bike in the road,” she said. “It was just this one particular occasion that he wasn’t.

“He’s a gentle person and he’s absolutely mortified by this.

“We’re doing our best to encourage kids to be independent and get themselves around, and this was a horrible thing to have happened.

“We ask our children to take responsibility and be respectful, and then grown adults don’t show any respect for them in return.”

Cllr Slade said she hopes there could be CCTV footage of the man.

She posted about the incident on her public Facebook account. A number of people have commented on the post.

One said: “I’m an adult and I cycle wherever I can on the paths around Leigh Road and Wimborne Road West as I feel unsafe on the roads with the amount of traffic.”