A few hours before his death Rhys went shopping with his mother to buy a new Fazakerly High School uniform. Kelly Martin, a shop assistant, said that the pair had been “chatting happily” and talked about Rhys’s nerves at starting “big school”.

Later he went to football training and was walking home with two friends at 7.30pm, a football still at his feet, when a hooded teenager on a BMX cycled up to them in the car park. A witness, a 42-year-old businessman who had walked out of the Fir Tree pub to have a cigarette, said that the teenager was 20 yards from him when he heard “a bang, which I thought was a firework”.

“As I looked around, he fired two more shots at his victim. He held both hands on the gun. He never flinched.

“The victim had on his football boots and a bag over his shoulder. He fell to the ground on his back and I ran up to him. Girls were screaming. He was trying to speak, but couldn’t get his words out. Then his mother arrived. She was leaning over him and saying, ‘Stay with us, son’.”

How worried should we be about gun crime?

Serious gun crime is concentrated in particular parts of England; internationally, the country has a low death rate from guns

BACKGROUND

• Factfile: teenagers gunned down across UK

• Three murders in four days in South London

• We Shall Overcome, protesters sing at peace vigil

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• Rhys Jones: a happy life cut short

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• Sharp rise in teens involved in gun crime

Melanie Jones had been driven to the pub by Tony Edge, 40, one of the football team’s coaches, who had rushed to the Jones’s family home, a few hundred yards away, as soon as he heard of the shooting. He said: “Melanie grabbed her keys and came in the car with me as we raced to the car park. She went to him, knelt down, held him and spoke to him.

“There was another little lad from the footy team who saw it. He was upset and I was trying to get him to stop looking at Rhys.”

Mr Edge, a Liverpool City Council worker, said that “it seemed to take for ever” for the ambulance to arrive. Paramedics fought to save Rhys, who had been shot in the neck, but he was pronounced dead on arrival at Alder Hey Hospital.

Merseyside Police said that the suspected killer was a slim white boy aged between 13 and 15 and about 5ft 8in (1m 73cm). He was riding a black BMX bicycle and wearing dark clothes, including a hoody top with a peak, and white trainers.

Last night Rhys’s grandmother, Doreen Jones, 76, said that he had been “a lovely, beautiful boy”. “I still can’t believe it. He was football mad and he also loved computer games. He was a very quiet child who didn’t really leave the road.”

His parents, Stephen and Melanie, who have been married for 20 years, had given their sons, Rhys and his elder brother, Owen, 17, a safe and secure upbringing. Home was a small, neat semi-detached house on a clean and tidy street where Rhys would often play with his friends. He was small for his age and was happy to play with younger neighbours. Ronald Gunson, a retired fireman, described Rhys as a gentle boy. Another neighbour, Jane Towey, 26, said that he was a “really polite, nice-mannered boy without a nasty bone in his body”.

Rhys’s parents were being comforted at their home yesterday. Police family liaison officers were with them and a uniformed officer stood guard at the front door. Mr Jones, 44, is the night manager at a Liverpool superstore and his wife, 41, is thought to work for the same company.

Both were avid supporters of Rhys when he played football for his local team, Fir Tree under-12s. His mother gave him £10 every time he scored a goal, which perhaps explained why the skilful midfielder so often begged to play as a striker. Everton was Rhys’s passion and he was rarely seen without the club football shirt on his back.

The Premier League team sent a message of condolence to his family and the Rev Harry Ross, the club chaplain, said that his church would be open tomorrow for fans wishing to mourn “this terrible, terrible tragedy”. A steady passage of children made their way to lay flowers at the car park where Rhys was shot. They included four weeping young boys, all wearing football shirts.

Mike Dickson, 11, will remember Rhys as the boy who took him under his wing and saved him from bullies. He said: “Rhys was the best mate I ever had. He never skitted me or made fun of me and being his mate meant I didn’t get bullied again.” Mike said that when he heard of Rhys’s death, “I just started crying and I don’t care who knows it — I can’t believe they have shot him dead.”

There was outrage at any suggestion that Rhys might have had any connection with gangs. The father of one of Rhys’s friends said there was “no way that Rhys or any of his mates were involved in anything like that.

“They were just little kids who played football. There are gangs of older kids who hang around. This has to have been a case of mistaken identity.”

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