A TEENAGER who made a hoax call claiming a bomb was on a Channel Tunnel train has avoided a jail sentence.

Maria Davies, 18, from County Durham, was put on probation and fined £118 after she admitted ringing a public phone box at the tunnel twice within the space of a few minutes.

Magistrates in Folkestone, Kent, were told Davies noted the number of the payphone in the tunnel terminal and dialled it as she waited to leave on a two-day trip to Luxembourg, on June 2.

She claimed there was a bomb on a bus.

Minutes later she rang again, saying: "There is a bomb on the shuttle."

Police were alerted and they found unemployed Davies, of Shinwell Crescent, Thornley, and a friend giggling into a mobile phone.

Officers checked the phone and found the last number it had dialled was to the payphone at 12.59am.

Davies pleaded guilty to communicating false information under the Criminal Law Act 1977