A CONCERNED mother wants ball bearing guns to be banned after her teenage daughter was shot in a Herefordshire street.

Jessica Norton, a 13-year-old schoolgirl, received injuries to her arm and knee after being shot from a passing car in Bargates, Leominster.

Jessica was attacked last Saturday at around 3.40pm as she walked down the street with a friend.

"People need to realise that these guns should not be being sold - full stop," said her mother Emily Norton. "It was lucky she was hit in the shoulder rather than in the eye."

Although Jessica did not receive deep wounds she sufferd shock.

"It was quite strange because when she phoned me to say she had been shot she was quite calm and then about half-an-hour later she started shaking from head-to-toe," her mother said.

Jessica suffered two flesh wounds to her arm and two in each knee but her friend escaped unharmed.

Police press officer Neil Tipton said a youth was arrested on suspicion of assault and issued with a reprimand.

The attack came days after the police issued a warning about the use of ball bearing guns in public places.

The warning followed a number of reports of individuals - many of them teenagers - carrying and firing ball bearing guns in Hereford city centre.

Recently two ball bearing guns were confiscated from teenagers after they were reported firing them in an underpass.

A 21-year-old man was also arrested after two motorists had pellets fired at their vehicles on the city's ring road.

PC Colin Kerfoot, from Hereford Police, said: "Any incident in which members of the public are fired at is clearly unacceptable - the fact that we have avoided serious injury in these cases is only by good fortune, especially as pellets have been fired at moving vehicles.

"The reality is that these ball bearing guns look almost identical to genuine firearms. Police officers have a duty to ensure public safety, and therefore, each incident will be dealt with as if the firearm is a real one."

Any parents concerned their children have such items can hand them into police stations across the county for their safe destruction.