A LITTLE girl who was last year fighting for her life at Southampton General Hospital has sold her precious toys to raise more than £1,000 for the children's unit.

Phoebe Messenger, aged five, was transferred to the hospital's intensive care unit after being run over near her home. The accident happened as she walked home from a friend's birthday party on December 15 with her mum, Pauline, and two-year-old brother, William.

The youngster suffered a fractured skull and a bleed in her brain, but made a miraculous recovery from her injuries after spending two weeks in the hospital.

Now the kind hearted girl, from the town of Pulborough in West Sussex, has said a big thankyou by selling her toys and raising more than £1,000 to buy special equipment for the children's unit.

Mrs Messenger said: "First of all she was taken to Chichester where they established she had a fractured skull and a bleed in her brain.

"They sent the team up from Southampton to get her and they assessed her and said they didn't think she needed an operation. She was in the paediatric intensive care unit to start with and then she made progress to the high dependency unit, then a normal children's ward."

Once she returned home, Phoebe said she wanted to find some way to say thank you to the staff who treated her.

Mrs Messenger who organised the fundraiser with her husband, Jeff, said: "She said she would like to sell some of her toys to make some money for the hospital to say thank you. We made about £1,000 on the day and then dribs and drabs of donations adding up to £1,250."

The money will be used to buy a resusitaire, a special incubator used for small babies on the paediatric high dependency unit.