POLICE finally brought home the bacon after cornering a runaway pig.

Two officers used a rope to catch the 15 stone pot-bellied porker as it squealed and tried to struggle free after it escaped from a garden and streaked into the Marsh playing fields in Weymouth.

Schoolgirl Shannon Charlton was getting a lift home through Westham from Budmouth Technology College with her dad and her friend when she spotted the animal.

Shannon, 15, and her friend Chloe Bailey first spotted the animal as it crossed in front of the car in Chickerell Road.

She said: “We nearly ran it over.

“We all jumped out of the car and it went into the playing fields and went crazy.

“We were in hysterics but my dad said ‘it’s not funny’ as it tried to bite him.”

Shannon’s father Neil ‘Chaz’ Charlton, landlord of the Clifton Hotel on Portland, said ‘it was a rasher decision’ to chase it into the playing fields and promised he was not telling porkies when he rang the Echo.

He said: “I’ve just been attacked by a pig. A big pig about five foot long came out and into the middle of the road. It scared the life out of an old lady when it went for her little dog.

“And it terrorised the kids when it went into the park.”

Mr Charlton called the police and spent 20 minutes trying to keep it in the playing fields and out of the swimming pool car park using a stick.

He added: “It tried to bite my leg and bit into my jeans.

“Thankfully the police came trotting along quite quickly but at first there was snout they could do about it.”

Lucy Weeks, one of the two Police Community Support Officers who attended, said she was shocked when she was called to take the pig back to the owner’s garden close to the Steps young people’s centre.

The pig was calm as they put it on to the makeshift lead but began to squeal and pull back as they pulled it out of the play park behind the swimming pool.

She said: “It’s certainly the most unusual job I’ve ever been to.

“It did not want to go.”