A SCHOOLBOY with Down’s syndrome sparked a massive police hunt when he disappeared from a Kent leisure centre only to be found in central London six hours later.

John Collins, 12, from East Malling, near Maidstone, managed to board a train to London, then travel on a bus unchallenged, despite being mute and penniless.

Police sent a dozen officers to look for him at 10am on Saturday, after he went missing from Swallows Leisure Centre, Sittingbourne, while his mother’s back was turned.

But as police frantically searched for John, he walked for 10 minutes to Sittingbourne Station and boarded a train without a ticket.

At Victoria he squeezed under barriers, boarded a bus to Paddington - again without a ticket - and played in a park for four hours.

John, who is 4ft 6ins, looks about eight and uses sign language, was only apprehended when he popped into a hairdressers to use the toilet at 4pm.

His mother, Kelly Tebb, described the news he had been found as the “best feeling ever”.

She said: “I had been beside myself. This was the real deal. He’d gone and we didn’t know where or who with. We didn’t know whether he’d got on a train or walked along the lines, or someone had taken him."

John has told his mother a few scant details about the trip but has been unable to come up with a reason for his disappearance.

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