Rhys Jones was killed by a schoolboy who had been ordered to shoot a rival gang member because of a lovers’ argument, police have been told.

Detectives believe that Rhys, 11, was accidentally hit by a stray bullet as he walked through a pub car park on the private Croxteth Park housing estate in Liverpool last Wednesday.

The intended victim is believed to have been a senior member of The Strand gang — known as the Nogga Dogs — who had started a relationship with a girl from Croxteth Park. The gun boy was allegedly ordered to carry out the attack by an older member of the Croxteth Crew gang because the rival was with a former girlfriend of his. The Croxteth Crew are based on a nearby social-housing estate.

Officers fear that the shooting could lead to tit-for-tat attacks, with tensions already high as Nogga Dogs — based in the Norris Green area — mark the first anniversary of the murder of one of their senior members by the Croxteth Crew. Police snatch squads backed by armed response units with stop-and-search powers operated throughout the weekend in Croxteth and Norris Green.

The teenage girl who is believed to have been at the centre of Rhys’s murder has already been questioned by police. She had lived with her parents and sisters in the Croxteth Park estate until the family moved this summer after shots were fired at their home.

Police now believe that they know who shot Rhys, but need witnesses and gang members to give formal evidence so that they can bring the case to court. Officers have recovered closed-circuit television footage from the Fir Tree pub but it is too grainy to identify the boy with the gun. They hope that it can be enhanced.

Six people remained in custody last night: two girls aged 15 and 18, two men aged 19, and two boys aged 15 and 16. One of the 19-year-olds was being treated in hospital yesterday after he tried to escape police by jumping from a first-floor window. A 14-year-old boy, two boys aged 15 and an 18-year-old man have been released on bail.

Chief Inspector Mike Cloherty said: “We have not been met with a wall of silence. Our officers have been given information. What we need is for people to come forward and give statements on paper. We have special measures that we can put in place from the moment they come to us until well after the trial.

“Criminals have a degree of what is acceptable but this is a once-in-a-generation crime.”

Chief Inspector Cloherty said that the rival gangs had been part of the same group until 2004 when they split into two factions after a senior member was shot in a pub.

“They are not gangsters, they are criminals dealing drugs, stealing cars and breaking into houses,” he said. “But they are looking to settle petty disputes with firearms.”

Each gang has five or six leaders, in their late teens and early twenties, with about 20 younger members, he said. However, they can rely on members of their extended families.

Rhys’s brother, Owen, 17, visited the scene of the shooting yesterday and left a bouquet and a towel with the logo of their favourite football club, Everton. Earlier he had written on an Everton internet forum: “Please do not think my brother was part of any gang, he was just an innocent boy in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Residents in Croxteth Park, the second-largest private estate in Europe, claimed that police had abandoned plans to site a mobile police station on the car park where Rhys was murdered. Emma Ahmed, 33, a solicitor who sits on the committee of the Croxteth Country Park Residents’ Association, said that police had promised that the station would be in place by April but they did not have sufficient resources. “There is no doubt in my mind he wouldn’t have died if that had been there,” Mrs Ahmed said. She said that Croxteth Park had been wrongly criticised because of its proximity to Croxteth and Norris Green, which have predominantly social housing.

A vicar in Croxteth Park said yesterday that society needs to rebuild itself. The Rev Dr David Leslie said: “In the past few days our estate has been turned upside down — we just can’t get our minds around what has happened.”

He added: “It seems as if we have slipped into some bizarre parallel universe where basic rules about human beings connecting with one another have been suspended.”

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