A mum says she was left distraught and has warned other parents to be careful after her five-year-old son almost hung himself on a fly curtain.

Justine Church, who lives in Strood, bought the item on Amazon to keep the flies out, and put it up at her back door.

On Thursday, it ended up getting tangled around her son Miles’ neck when he went to walk through it.

The mum-of-five said: “I was at work and my husband was upstairs hoovering, obviously he couldn’t hear much because the hoover was on.

“His twin brother Darwin managed to untangle him but now it basically looks like he’s got whiplash around his neck, it’s probably going to scar.

“He was quite traumatised at the time and it was really sore because it’s like a burn.”

The 42-year-old said she was “distraught” when she got back from work and found out what had happened.

“When you’re looking online you know what you want, you know the size you want, you put it in your basket and you order it,” she said.

“It arrived, and didn’t have any warning on the package but since then, I’ve Googled it and seen that it’s happened before.

“When I looked at the reviews on Amazon, there’s so many people it’s happened to.”

Justine says more people need to be aware of the dangers fly curtains can pose to young children.

She said: “It’s that time of year where you need to be more conscious of things like paddling pools, blind cords, the windows being open – I’ve got five children so I’m fully aware of safety issues around children and my house is baby-proofed.

“We can’t supervise them all of the time so we’ve got window locks, a padlocked gate, and the blind cords are put up.

“But when you’re buying a blind it’s slapped all over the box that there’s danger of choking – on this there was no warning at all.

“On their advert, if you scroll right down to the bottom there’s a legal disclaimer that children must not go through it unsupervised but that’s not practical.”

She instantly took the curtain down and put it in the bin after the incident.

“I’ve left a review but I don’t want a refund, I just want people to be more aware because you don’t link a curtain like that to strangulation,” she said.

“I’m quite happy with the flies flying round the house now – I’m just shocked at the amount of reviews online saying how bad they are.

“If he hadn’t been untangled by his brother, I could have been burying him, it would have been a completely different story.”