A YORK builder has told how he discovered a terrified lorry driver 46 miles from the spot where he was abducted at gunpoint.

Geoff Carr, of Sutton Road, Wigginton, answered his door at 10.45pm on Monday to find a petrified man begging to use his phone to call the police.

"He looked a bit of a mess, as if he had been in a fight," he said.

He said the man told him his lorry had been hijacked and he was confused and did not know where he was.

Mr Carr, 65, let the man in and heard about his three-hour ordeal.

He said: "He was shaking like a leaf. He told me he had stopped in a lay-by near Scotch Corner for a pee when a man had asked him to sell him a bit of diesel."

The next thing the victim knew, the man had been joined by four men who threatened him with a shotgun and bundled him into a white van.

He said the men, who at one point were wearing Hallowe'en masks, held the gun against his neck and drove him to the Wigginton area of York.

"He thought he was going to get shot. They pulled him out of the van and pushed him on to the grass," Mr Carr said.

"They said, 'You stay there, don't you dare move. We are coming back in ten minutes.'

"He lay in the grass frightened to death, but they didn't come back. He said he saw a van coming and thought it was them, so he jumped into a hedge."

He said the 42-year-old man, who lives in Doncaster, had clearly been traumatised.

"At times he was almost crying, he was continuously shaking. I made him a cup of tea to calm him down but he couldn't drink it, he was shaking so much," he said.

The hijackers struck at 7.45pm on Monday at Scotch Corner on the A1, stealing the trailer of the lorry, which was laden with whisky. The Renault lorry cab was discovered 46 miles away at a caf between Deighton and Escrick.

Anyone with information about the Renault 420 truck - registration X908 EVS - should phone police on 01609 783131.

Updated: 11:19 Wednesday, October 29, 2003