A bold pensioner stopped louts throwing sticks onto shoppers from a rooftop.

As the teenagers were about to hurl down the objects Pauline Kingston shouted out that the police were coming.

The three boys then dropped the sticks and ran away.

Mrs Kingston, of Monks Horton said: “I had seen them earlier and I began to realise that they were up to no good.

“When I shouted at them they shot off like scared rabbits.”

Mrs Kingston, 73, had confronted the boys when they were on the roof of the Edinburgh Road car park in Ashford at about 2.15pm on Friday.

She first seen them when she was parked in her own car just a few yards away on the rooftop section of the neighbouring Park Mall car park.

She said: “At first they were walking on a wall with spiked railings nearby and I worried that they would slip and impale themselves.”

But, she explained, they disappeared for a few minutes.

"I shouted: 'I've rung the police and they're on their way'... they dropped the sticks and ran away" - Pauline Kingston

When they reappeared she saw one of the boys with a bundle of sticks, each one about 1.5 to 2ft long.

She says he was passing sticks to the other two and then each went by the roof edge overlooking the taxi rank at Park Street.

She explains: “They were each about to throw down sticks.

“I shouted out: ‘I’ve rung the police and they’re on their way.’

“They dropped the sticks on the ground and then ran away."

Mrs Kingston, who had been doing a weekly shop with a relative at the time, had bluffed as she had not called the police.

But she wanted to highlight what happened to warn others.

She describes the boys as aged 13 to 14 with the tallest of the groups being the instigator.