Baby separated from mum on metro

A GOOD samaritan took an eight-month-old baby to a Toulouse police station after the boy became separated from his mother on the city's metro system.

The 24-year-old mother was trying to board a busy train at Capitole station but was pushed to one side by a crowd. She lost her grip on the pram and the doors closed with the child inside the train and her on the platform.

A man on the train took care of baby Youssef and alighted at the next stop to wait for the mother to arrive on the next train. But 40 minutes later, she had still not appeared and he took the child to the mairie to seek help from the municipal police.

It later emerged that the mother had panicked and instead of waiting for the next train, had run to the other platform and boarded a train in the opposite direction.

Municipal police said it took some time for them to understand the situation as "the man didn't speak much French".

"The boy was chewing his mother's smartphone and at one point started crying," a police spokesman said. "As all of the mother's belongings were in the pram we gave him a bottle containing some fruit juice and he soon went to sleep."

The mother, meanwhile, alerted police to what had happened and was later reunited with her child.