A mother today told of her horror after her 11-year-old son was shot in the head while trying to retrieve a football, leaving a hole in his skull the size of a five pence piece.

The youngster was playing with friends after school on a new-build estate where houses sell for upwards of £450,000 when he was hit behind the ear by a pellet fired from an airgun and collapsed to the ground.

Doctors told his distraught mother that the shot missed his brain by a fraction.

As police launched an investigation into Monday's terrifying shooting, saying the unnamed boy could have been killed, parents on the development in Leyland, Lancashire said they were now frightened to let their children play outdoors.

The boy was playing football with friends in the back garden of a house on Roadtrain Avenue when the football went into a large, unsold detached show home next door.

He volunteered to get it and was standing on a bar of a fence when he was struck and fell to the ground.

Friends helped pick him up and rushed him to his home around the corner.

A GV of houses in Roadtrain Avenue, Leyland, Lancashire where an 11-year-old boy was shot in the head by an air rifle pellet 

The boy's mother, who asked not to be identified, said she first discovered what had happened when her son appeared with a tea towel on his head.

'All the other kids were shouting he had been shot,' she said today.

'I was in shock. One minute he was playing football and the next he is collapsed on the floor.

'He spend three nights at Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool and he's been left with a hole to size of a 5p coin.

'It narrowly missed his brain so he has been lucky. He's a tough lad.'

The boy's mother said she first thought her son had been hit from a BB gun, but police had later told them it was an air rifle.

She said the youngster had taken a picture of the projectile removed from his head to show friends.

'It is very worrying,' she added.

'There are a lot of children on this estate and a lot of their mothers are really worried now.'

Today one local mother said: 'It is really scary.

'Who could do such a thing to a young lad who was only playing football?

'Ever since it happened the streets around here have been a lot quieter because you can tell people are frightened what might happen until someone is caught.'

According to Lancashire Police, the boy was 'hit in the head by a metal pellet fired from what is thought to be an air weapon' as he tried to retrieve the football at about 7.20pm on Monday.

Det Con Paul Brown said: 'This incident has left a young boy with some really significant injuries, and it is fortunate he was not more seriously hurt or even killed.

'We are carrying out a number of enquiries to try and identify the person or persons responsible and I would appeal to anyone who saw what happened, has any dashcam or Ring doorbell footage, or who has any information which could assist our investigation to get in touch.

'I'm sure someone in the local community knows who is responsible for what's happened to this young boy and I would urge them to come and speak to us.'