An eight-year-old girl has spoken of her ordeal after a man pointed a gun at her in the street.
Lennie Rae was walking with her mother, Emma Chown, 34 and a family friend, Hayley Nicholls, when the incident occurred.
Emma said she feared for her life and told the gunman to point the weapon away from her young daughter.
Now brave Lennie, from Plymouth, Devon, has described the ordeal and said she was so scared she couldn’t run.
Lennie said: “I saw this man making weird noises and all of a sudden he looked at us and pulled a gun out at us.
“We were pressing all the buzzers trying to get someone to answer to get us to safety but we couldn’t.
“I was feeling very worried and scared because I didn’t know what was going to happen.
“I couldn’t run because I was so worried.
“I was very scared because I have never seen something like this before in my whole life.
“I thought it was going to be [the] last [moments of my] life.”
Emma said: “We were walking up the road and there was a man on the opposite side and he started making these weird noises.
“He looked up at the police cameras and then looked straight at me, my friend and my daughter and called us dirty, stinky c****.
“Next minute, he pulled out a gun straight from his shorts and pointed it at us.
“I then went into shock mode.
“I didn’t know what to do, I had my daughter screaming and my mate said to him, “please, don’t do this.”
“We managed to get around the corner but it all happened in slow motion.
“He said, ‘That’s it, I’m coming for you’.
“We managed to run into the walkway of an old people’s home in Devonport, well out of view of him. We stayed there for 20 minutes.
“We rang the buzzer of the home but no-one would answer.”
“I thought this was it, my life is over.
“My friend, she had a massive panic attack, so did my daughter.
“I was protecting my daughter. I didn’t know what was going on.
“I was so shocked. All I could think was, ‘this is a terror attack’.
“He didn’t seem right in the head. He was making all these weird monkey noises.”
Hayley managed to call the police and they were advised to go home.
She said officers took statements from them yesterday evening and that Victim Support had been in contact with them since their terrifying ordeal.
Devon and Cornwall Police has been approached for comment.
A force spokesman said this morning that he was unaware of any firearms incidents.
