Parents of a 14-year-old boy scarred for life in a drive-by shooting said justice had been done after seeing the gunman jailed for four years.

The boy had to undergo surgery and is peppered with scars on his back and buttocks after being fired at with a shotgun by 19-year-old Simon Roberts in Didcot town centre last August.

He told how he frantically pedalled his bicycle after seeing Roberts hanging out of the passenger window of his friend David Johnson's Hyundai car armed with a gun, before hearing a shot and experiencing a pain which felt like a punch in his back.

Fiona Horlick, prosecuting, told Oxford Crown Court yesterday that a lot of pellets struck the boy and he had been left with a large number of scars.

She said the shooting followed a fall-out over some girls between Roberts and Johnson, and a group of boys from Didcot, which the injured boy was not part of.

Labourer Roberts, of Banwell Avenue, Swindon, admitted possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life, wounding with intent and possession of a shotgun without a licence.

Johnson, 21, of West View Crescent, Devizes, Wiltshire, who was sharing a caravan with Roberts near Didcot at the time of the shooting, denied the same counts, but pleaded guilty to lesser charges three days into a trial last month.

He was jailed for three years yesterday after admitting unlawful wounding, possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence and possession of a shot gun without a licence.

Judge David Morton Jack said: "The thoughtlessness and danger of what you did beggars belief.

"From that range a shotgun could kill."

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, looked on with his parents and sister as the men were sentenced.

After the hearing, he told how he had been at football training on the night of the shooting and had only left home to get a kebab from a shop in Broadway.

He said: "I'm glad to see them sent to prison after what they did."

His father, who also cannot be named, said his son had been a "tower of strength" throughout the ordeal.

He added: "We feel justice has been served."