A TEENAGE girl said she was lucky to be alive after being knocked unconscious by a heavy roof tile which was blown off a roof.

The horrifying moment Becky Mead-Boulton was struck on the head by the flying tile was caught on CCTV.

The tile had blown off the roof of the four-storey Jobcentre Plus building in Charles Street, Newport, and hit her on the back of head – knocking her to the floor.

Miss Mead-Boulton, 16, from Rogerstone, Newport, said: “I was unconscious for a maximum of 30 seconds.”

The Coleg Gwent student, who returned to college in Crosskeys on Tuesday, said: “It could have been so much worse. It could have killed me. That’s what everyone at the hospital kept saying. I’m so lucky.”

The family are now considering legal action.

Miss Mead-Boulton had been waiting for a lift with her friend Beth Bedborough in Charles Street on Saturday, November 2.

She said: “Me and my friend were waiting for a lift home because we’d been out in town. So her dad said wait at Charles Street.

“He often picks us up from the Jobcentre. But then, obviously, the weather got really bad. We saw one tile fall down the side of the building and turned to look, and then the other three were coming down. The last thing I can remember is my friend screaming Becky. It was all so quick.”

Her friend had seen the falling tiles and managed to dodge them.

“People kept saying not to move me but I was scared more tiles were going to fall,” said Miss Mead-Boulton.

“A guy gave me his t-shirt to put on my head and stop the bleeding.”

Miss Mead-Boulton’s mother, Hazel, had just got home when she received a call from her daughter.

Mrs Mead-Boulton said: “Panic was my first reaction and just to get to her as soon as I could. She was very unaware. She was very shaken and traumatised as we all were.”

CCTV footage from the bar opposite, Langtons, showed Becky being hit on the head.

Miss Mead-Boulton and her mother have since seen the video. She said: “I’ve watched the video but I didn’t like it. I remember a lot of it so I don’t need to go through it again.”

She had eight stitches, which were taken out on Monday.

“It’s still quite tender but it’s getting better. It’s more the emotional side of things that are harder,” she added.

“I think it’s been hard for Beth too. It would have scared anyone half to death. There’s like a one in a million chance of it happening.”

Mrs Mead-Boulton said: “The physical injuries mend quite quickly but it’s the mental side that takes longer. We’re taking each day as it comes. The best thing is she’s alive and kicking and on the mend.

“I can’t thank the people who helped her on the scene and the paramedics enough. We’ve had a lot of support.”

A spokeswoman from Telereal Trillium, which owns the building, said: “We are taking this incident very seriously. Early indications are the particularly severe weather that evening resulted in the tiles coming loose and that there were no contributing structural issues. Our investigations are on-going and we will be extending the scaffolding so that we can survey the entire roof.”