Two schoolgirls have been found guilty of a racial attack on a family which left a seven-month-old baby lying in the path of a bus.

The girls, aged 14 and 15, subjected a fellow teenager to shouts of “Paki” before assaulting her and her mother in the street near West Croydon station.

The 14-year-old girl was found guilty of causing actual bodily harm to the baby after magistrates decided her attack on the daughter led to him being flung from her grasp into a bus lane.

Neither girl can be named for legal reasons, with magistrates refusing to lift reporting restrictions on identity as they felt it was “not a sufficiently serious case”.

The 13-year-old victim was out shopping with her mum, younger sister and infant brother when they ran into their attackers in Primark, North End last July.

Croydon Youth Court heard the teenager had previously been bullied by one of the attackers over her vitiligo, a condition that affects the pigment of her skin.

Speaking via video link from Mauritius, where the family has moved to try to forget the attack, the girl said: “When I came up the escalator I saw it was her (the bully).

“I first saw her alone then when I got in the queue I saw it was her and her friend.

“She was shouting 'you bloody s***face, you paki, watch out I'll jump on your back, I'll rip your earrings out.”

The two girls followed the young family up towards West Croydon station, stopping in KFC before attacking the teenager and her mother and causing the infant to be thrown into the bus lane.

Magistrates decided that despite slight inconsistencies in the family’s evidence their reports were credible, and tallied well with those of independent witnesses.

But they said the evidence given by the defendants in court was less believable, with key differences between these accounts and evidence given to police shortly after the attack.

They decided the injuries to the baby were directly caused by the younger attacker’s “reckless action”, finding her guilty of causing actual bodily harm.

She was warned she could face time in a detention centre due to the seriousness of the crime, Both girls were also found guilty of racially aggravated harassment and two counts of common assault on two members of the family.

They will be sentenced at the same court on March 11.