A HOMEMADE boobytrap exploded in the hand of a 12-year-old boy after he pick-ed it up while trespassing on private land, a court has heard.

Skip hire owner Jack Clarkson installed the alarm gun at his mill in Worsthorne, near Burnley, after he suffered a spate of thefts and fire damage.

Clarkson, 63, faces a minimum five-year jail term, barring exceptional circumstances, if convi-cted of possessing a prohibited firearm at the trial at Burnley Crown Court.

The device was triggered by walking into a trip wire which discharged a shotgun cartridge into the ground from the barrelled contraption.

Jack John Ashley, known as JJ, bypassed the boo-bytrap and took the device to a wall near his home in Worsthorne where he accidentally set it off.

Mark Lamberty, prose-cuting, said the boy suffered a "nasty injury" to his left hand and needed hospital treatment to surgically remove the pellets.

Earlier, JJ and three other youths entered the mill and activated the device on the evening of April 6, 2006.

They all ran off but three of them later returned the same night and took the boobytrap off the premi-ses.

Clarkson, of Water Street, Worsthorne, was arrested by police the next day along with fellow defendants Derek Kokoc-inski, 56, of Salterford Lane, Cliviger, and Peter Smith, 51, of Gordon Street, Worsthorne.

Kokocinski, who admits making the alarm gun and giving it to Clarkson, is accused of manufacturing a prohibited firearm, and Smith is charged with possessing a prohibited firearm, after a similar alarm gun was found on his allotment.

Mr Lamberty said it was the prosecution's case the alarm device could be classed as a firearm and none of the three men had permission to make or possess it.

Under the 1968 Firearms Act a firearm is defined as a lethal, barrelled weapon from which a shot, bullet or missile can be discharged, he said.

"Here we have got items that are barrelled.

"It is a lethal weapon because it is capable of causing death," he said.

"Someone could have been killed if they had been kneeling behind the boy when the gun went off.

"It's an extreme possi-bility but it could have happened.

"The prosecution say, unhappily, these items were firearms."

An exception was if it could be proved the alarm gun was a "signalling apparatus" but the Crown Prosecution Service would argue that was not the case.

Clarkson, Kokocinski and Smith deny the charges.

The trial is listed for three days.

(Proceeding)