A TEENAGER'S anxious parents today cut short a holiday after their daughter suffered serious injuries in a road accident near her home.

Tracy Ashworth, 17, of Elmwood Street, Burnley, broke a vertebra in her neck and suffered leg injuries in the accident outside shops on Accrington Road, near to the junction with Clough Street, yesterday.

She has been transferred to the specialist spinal unit at Southport Hospital and staff today said her condition was "poorly".

The worker in the butcher's department of nearby Kwik Save was on her lunch hour when she collided with a Vauxhall Cavalier driven by Sajid Khan, 19, of Daneshouse Road, Burnley. He was unhurt.

Family friends were today travelling to Manchester Airport to collect Tracy's parents, Graham and Christine, who had been on holiday on Ibiza since Sunday. They said: "Tracy is a tough little girl. She was conscious all of the time and knew just what the medics were saying to her, we just hope she will be all right.

"The police were brilliant and managed to trace her parents in San Antonio and the holiday rep organised a flight home."

An ambulance crew from Altham initially took Tracy, a former Towneley High School pupil, to Burnley General Hospital but when the seriousness of her injuries became apparent she was transferred to the specialist unit at Southport.

Her older brother Barry, 23, and sister Lyndsay, 18, have been with her in the hospital. Her younger brother Gareth, 16, is at home in Burnley.

The family are well-known in the Accrington Road area. Until recently Graham and Christine ran the Fleece Inn.

After the accident police set up road blocks on the busy road and traffic was diverted along side streets while the accident investigation team attended.

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