Firearm which injured boy, 12, was 'an alarm'

4:03pm Tuesday 22nd January 2008

A FIREARM which went off in the hand of a 12-year-old trespasser was installed as an alarm, according to a businessman.

Skip hire firm owner Jack Clarkson, 63, was arrested after the home-made device exploded and injured the boy.

The device could be triggered by walking into a trip wire, at Clarkson's mill in Worsthorne which would fire a shotgun cartridge from the barrelled contraption into the ground.

Jack John Ashley, known as JJ, bypassed the trap as he took the device off the premises and played with it near his home in the village when it accidentally went off, Burnley Crown Court was told.

The defendant faces a minimum five-year jail term, barring exceptional circumstances, if he is convicted of illegally possessing a prohibited firearm.

Clarkson said a build-up of thefts, vandalism and fire damage led him to setting up the alarm gun for the first time on April 6 2006 - the day of the accident.

When arrested, Clarkson, of Water Street, Worsthorne, told officers the device was used as a scare tactic.

The gun fired a blank cartridge less than a hour after Clarkson installed it when a number of youths entered the mill in Gordon Street.

Clarkson redeployed the device but said he did not have time to empty the shotgun pellets from the cartridge and instead left in live rounds.

He was supplied the device by his longtime friend, Derek Kokocinski, 56, who is accused of manufacturing a prohibited firearm.

Giving evidence, fish farmer Kokocinski, of Salterford Lane, Cliviger, said he made the device to help alert him to poachers on his land.

He said it was up to them to decide whether it was prohibited or if it fitted the exemption of being a form of signalling apparatus.

A third defendant, Peter Smith, 51, of Gordon Street, Worsthorne, who was supplied a similar alarm gun by Kokocinski, is also charged with possessing a prohibited firearm on his allotment.

All three deny the charges.

Proceeding

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