SHORT TAKES : ‘Turtles’ Kick Perils Teen Lives
Teen-agers are risking their lives by taking to sewers on bicycles and skateboards in imitation of the stars of the popular U.S. television series “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” police said today.
A police spokesman in Melbourne said the children could be drowned or poisoned by gases in the sewers. “There are no two ways about it,” he said. “If it keeps going some child will be drowned. That’s the part that frightens us.”
“They have obtained maps of the systems and know where they are going in the dark,” he told reporters. In one recent incident 18 officials spent four hours chasing one group of children who escaped untouched.
The animated television series, which is screened daily in Australia, features mutant turtles who live in the sewers and fight crime using ninja martial arts.
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