POLICE in Oswestry have slammed the actions of an individual who put chewing gum in a life-saving device.

The sticky substance was smeared onto the key code of the defibrillator box based at St Oswald’s Parish Church, meaning the equipment itself could not be accessed.

There are a number of defibrillators based in and around Oswestry, each inside a box that has a unique code to access it.

Those trained on the devices are given the code for their nearest one, while in an emergency the ambulance service will give the code out to those making a 999 call, so the heart-start machine can be accessed.

In a post on Twitter, @OsCops described the act as “mindless”.

They added: “Some mindless individual has put chewing gum into the key code of the defibrillator at St Oswald Parish Church. You have put lives at risk.”