A DEVASTATED mother has told of how she tried to talk her 13-year-old son down from the roof a house following the suspected suicide of his friend.

She spoke as a boy was today due to appear before magistrates accused of affray, assault and criminal damage.

His friend Adam Rickwood, of Harold Street, became the youngest person in the country to die while in custody after he was found hanging in his room at the Hassockfield Centre in Consett, County Durham, last week.

The boy climbed on to the roof of a house in Cog Street, Burnley, after police went to an address at 10am yesterday to arrest a youth suspected of being in breach of an ASBO.

Roads around the house, including part of Accrington Road, were closed while police tried to talk him down in torrential rain.

The boy came down after two and a half hours.

After helping to talk him down from the roof of the terrace house, which is believed to be empty, his mother said: "When the police came he got scared because of what happened to Adam. He just wants to come home." She said he was on the roof crying.

"I told him I would be for him and asked him to come down.

"Me and his dad got the chance to give a cuddle before the police took him away."

She added: "I am scared for him - I don't want him to start thinking like Adam. Someone needs to get inside his head and find out why he is doing these things."