A TEENAGE boy who was allegedly manipulated to take the blame for a murder his father committed told police ‘No normal kid has ever had to do anything like this.’

The prosecution in the murder trial of Matthew Moseley, 50, said he leaned on his son Thomas, 14, to take responsibility for the doorstep shooting of Lee Holt, 32, at their family home in Barnard Close, Oswaldtwistle in October.

Mr Holt had gone to the house in a taxi with his partner Kate Phelan and her son, Wesley Metcalfe, 14, to confront Thomas over an ongoing dispute between the schoolboys, Preston Crown Court heard.

It is alleged that after hearing his front door kicked and outside windows smacked that Moseley shot Mr Holt with a semi-automatic shotgun before he handed Thomas the gun and told him to say he had fired it.

Thomas later told police: “I’m holding the gun thinking ‘what the flame has just happened?”

The boy said his mother, Julia, had thought in the immediate aftermath that he had fired the fatal shot. He told police: “She said, ‘why didn’t you at least shoot him in the legs?”

In a recording of the interview played to the jury, an officer asked him: “How did you feel at that point?”

Thomas Moseley said: “Rubbish. And the police obviously came in and I told them I had done it and then my dad said it was in self-defence.

“I couldn’t believe what had happened. No normal kid has ever had to do anything like this.”

The officer then asked Thomas how he felt, to which he said: “You think he would take responsibility for his own actions but he didn’t. I don’t know.”

Asked why he told police at the crime scene that he was responsible, he said: “Because I thought I was covering my dad. Sticking up for him.”

“Did you want to do that?” asked the officer, Thomas replied ‘no’.

He adds: “He is my dad. I love him to bits but you would think he would take responsibility for what he has done and not let his son take the blame for him.”

Matthew Moseley denies murder.

The trial continues.