A TREE surgeon has told a jury he is not lying about a fatal doorstep shooting being an accident.

Matthew Moseley, 50, claims his son Thomas fatally shot Lee Holt, 32, as he reached to take the semi-automatic Beretta shotgun from the 14-year-old.

Mr Holt went to the Moseleys’ address in Oswaldtwistle with his partner, Kate Phelan, and her 15-year-old son, Wesley Metcalfe, to confront Thomas over an ongoing dispute between the schoolboys.

The Crown say Matthew Moseley alone held the firearm and blasted Mr Holt once in the chest after he heard a commotion outside and opened his front door.

It is alleged he then persuaded Thomas to falsely confess he fired the gun and continued to pressure him to take the blame for the killing.

On Tuesday, prosecutor Robert O’Sullivan QC asked the defendant at Preston Crown Court why he did not tell police it was an accident when they arrested his son on the night of the shooting on October 25 last year.

He said: “Your case is that it is a terrible accident. Why were you not shouting that from the rooftops to anyone that would listen? Why not say it to the police officer when he was putting the handcuffs on your son?”

Moseley replied: “I don’t know.”

Mr O’Sullivan said: “Did you not think it would help your son to tell the arresting police officer that it was a terrible accident?”

The defendant said: “I didn’t get asked anything by the police. Thomas said what he did.”

The prosecutor continued: “But in the police body-cam footage we have seen, you were saying ‘self-defence, self-defence’.

“Why did you choose not to reveal what may be very important information at that point?”

Moseley said: “I don’t know.”

Mr O’Sullivan said: “Because you had not thought of it yet, that is the reason.”

The defendant said: “On that remark you are very... I don’t need to make it up.”

The jury was told that Moseley did not claim it was an accident either in his original witness statement or in the police interviews that followed when he too was arrested.

Mr O’Sullivan also asked him why he told four different people in phone calls after the shooting in Barnard Close that Thomas was responsible for the shooting.

Moseley said he could not remember the conversations.

Earlier in the trial, Thomas Moseley told the jury he saw his father - a keen shooting enthusiast - bend down beside his gun cabinet, load a shotgun and then shoot Mr Holt as the front door opened.

But Matthew Moseley denies loading the gun or holding it as the door opened.

He said: “There was a biggish bloke, shaved head, stood there. Coming out with a few profanities. He was on one, aggressive. Not very pleasant.

“He looked at me, starting going towards the house and lifted his hands up.

“Next thing I know, Thomas is at the side of me. I saw it (the gun) coming past. I put my hand up to knock it away and the gun went off.

“I was not aiming it at anybody and it just went off.”

When the defendant’s barrister, Nicholas Johnson QC, asked him whether he had leaned on his son from an early stage to take the blame for the shooting, Matthew Moseley replied: “I have never asked Thomas to do anything.”

Mr Johnson went on: “Had you had some sort of pep talk before the police arrived to encourage him falsely to admit shooting Lee Holt?”

“No,” the defendant replied.

Mr Johnson asked Matthew Moseley whether he had decided to tell the police everything he knew when he gave a statement on the night of the murder.

He replied: “I didn’t tell them everything I knew because Thomas is my son.”

When interviewed the defendant told detectives he only heard a bang and saw nothing before he later conceded his son “probably” discharged the firearm.

Matthew Moseley denies murder.

The trial continues.