A BOY with Down’s Syndrome rushed out of the house to get help for his grandmother who was paralysed with pain after dislocating her artificial hip.

Plucky young Lewis Taplin, 9, who lives near his grandmother in Downley dashed over the road to alert neighbours.

“He’s my hero,” said his relieved grandmother Carmelina Taplin,67, back at her Melbourne Road home this week after two days in Stoke Mandeville Hospital where doctors manipulated her hip back into position under anaesthetic.

The accident happened the day before Lewis was due to go back to Disraeli School in the village.

His father, Carmelina’s son Alan, had just dropped him off to stay with Carmelina for the night.

“I was due to take him to school in the morning because his mother was on holiday in Turkey.

"We were getting ready for bed and I said ‘I’ll just sit down for five minutes and we’ll watch TV’ and that’s when I felt it go. I was in terrible pain.

"I couldn’t move. I said ‘pass me the phone, I’ll ring for an ambulance.’

"Lewis thought I was joking at first because we play games like that sometimes but when he realised I really was unable to get up from my chair he wanted to help.

"He rushed out and crossed the road – he shouldn’t have done that, he could have gone next door - to get help.

"He brought three neighbours back – he evidently thought we needed all the help he could find.

"I couldn’t have reached the door to let the ambulance men in if I’d been on my own.”

It wasn’t the first occasion that Mrs Taplin’s artificial hip has let her down. It has slipped out of place five times since it was fitted in 2007.

She said: “The time before this the ambulancemen had to break down the door because I couldn’t get up.”

The proud grandmother says she wasn’t surprised that the youngest of her seven grandchildren had reacted well in an emergency.

“He was too scared to get in the ambulance to kiss me goodbye when they took me out on a stretcher.

"Unfortunately I haven’t seen my little hero yet since I’ve been back home to thank him.

“I want him to see his picture in the Bucks Free Press so people will know he’s not only clever but handsome.”