Baby-faced and dressed in the blue strip of his beloved Everton, Rhys Jones stared from the front pages of Liverpool's evening paper yesterday as the city grappled with the fact the 11-year-old had been gunned down on its streets. Mary Fitzgeraldreports from Liverpool
At the Jones's semi-detached home in Croxteth Park, a sprawling estate some 6.5km (four miles) north of the city centre, the blinds were drawn and a police officer stood guard outside.
Rhys loved to play football on the street in front of his house, remembered one neighbour who declined to give her name. "He was a lovely little lad. Very sensible, you know? All he ever did was play football. There was never a bit of trouble from him."
Everyone who knew Rhys Jones says the same. And everyone wonders why the 11-year-old was shot as he walked home from football training on Wednesday evening.
According to witnesses, the gunman, his face obscured by a hood, rode past the nearby Fir Tree pub on a BMX bike and fired three shots. One of the bullets struck Rhys in the neck, one hit a car and another missed. Two youths, aged 14 and 18, who were arrested in connection with the shooting, have been released on bail.
The area around the pub remained cordoned-off last night. Friends and relatives had earlier laid flowers, a teddy bear and a floral Everton football club crest at the scene.
Some residents were keen to downplay any suggestion the killing was gang-related, but others wondered if Rhys had been the innocent victim of a feud between two of Liverpool's most notorious gangs.
The Croxteth Park estate, with its neat streets lined with more than 3,000 red-bricked bungalows and semi-detached houses surrounded by well-tended gardens, borders two of Merseyside's toughest estates, Croxteth - where footballer Wayne Rooney grew up - and Norris Green. Both estates are well-known gang territories: the former for the Croxteth Crew and the latter for their rival, the Strand Crew.
A number of residents said some problems of Croxteth and Norris Green were creeping into their estate. Many complained dozens of youths had started to congregate every evening outside shops next to where Rhys was shot.
"There are some really nasty kids out there," one elderly resident told a Merseyside radio station yesterday, adding he was afraid to walk to the shops at night. Another admitted there was a problem but, he said, "I never imagined it would ever come to something like this."