A £25,000 reward has been put up to catch a gang of armed robbers – as the security guard they shot spoke for the first time of his terrifying ordeal.

Police are hoping the cash will ‘loosen a few tongues among the criminal fraternity’ over the raid in Preston Old Road, Cherry Tree, Blackburn, last December.

The reward offer came as officers yesterday arrested seven people, aged between 20 and 31 and from Blackburn and Accrington, in connection with the robbery.

But detectives said that, despite the swoops, they still needed people to come forward with information.

It was the first time someone had been shot in the town since 2001 and the horror was compounded by the robbers’ needless violence in shooting the guard in the knee after he handed over cash.

Speaking about his ordeal, the 30-year-old guard for cash delivery firm Loomis said he had been left too scared to leave his home.

The man, who was too fearful to be named for fear of reprisals, said: “My physical injuries are slowly healing but the psychol-ogical damage they have done is going to take a long time to come to terms with.

“I get flash backs and have difficulty sleeping at night. I often wake up in a cold sweat.

“At times I am very wary of what’s around me and when people walk up to me it puts me on edge.

“People have been trying to reassure me and I want to get back to normal but its hard. It has changed my life.

“I am more on edge. I can’t go out on my own. I can’t go to the shop.

“I am more like a prisoner: stuck in the house all the time.

“I just wish I could go to my local shops. Everything else can come later. I just want the confidence to go to the shop.

“I don’t really like to think about what happened and talking about it is difficult but hopefully people will hear my story and come forward.”

On his physical injuries, he said: “I have still got pain in my leg and I can’t walk properly. I get a numbness in it sometimes. I have nerve damage and it will take a couple of years to heal.

“When ever I have a shower I look down and I see the wound in my leg, it reminds me of what happened.

The guard described his attackers as ‘cowards’.

He was making a delivery to an ATM at the former IndigoCircle estate agents when two balaclava-clad men struck. It was only his third month in the job.

The guard said: “They were shouting and started pushing me around. I was really shaken up and distressed and then they started waving a gun, asking my colleague to open the door.

“At this point I moved away to take the attention away from him.

“I handed the cash box over, then one of them shot me in the leg. I just felt pain. I didn’t know I had been shot until afterwards.

“There was no point firing the gun into my leg. He had got what he wanted.

“There was no warning. He pulled the trigger once, twice and on the third time the gun went off, so he intentionally shot me.”

After being shot, the guard said that during the next few minutes he felt a mixture of fear, confusion and pain before the emergency services arrived.

Now he feels anger. He said: “I had done nothing to provoke them. I was just doing my job, trying to earn a living.

“I think the men who did this were cowards. They used an extreme level of violence. I knew it could be a dangerous job but didn’t expect to be shot.

“If there’s anybody with information then I would tell them to come forward.

“What they did to me, they could do to someone else.”