A South Hams kickboxing instructor has denied spraying a group of children with ball bearing pellets and said he pulled out a fake machine pistol ‘as a laugh’.

Peter Sheridan said he shot pellets away from the six children who were running up and down the hall rather than at them.

He said the gun was a toy, he fired at the ceiling and a set of curtains and the children were laughing and one jokingly asked him to try to shoot him.

Sheridan was running a class at the Quayside Leisure Centre in Kingsbridge on December 17, 2016, when he asked his 18-year-old son Connaire to fetch the BB rifle.

A jury at Exeter Crown Court has heard how three children aged 10 or 11 complained they had small marks where they had been hit by pellets.

Officers seized the battery-powered BB gun, which is a realistic imitation of a M40 carbine and fires 6mm pellets.

International kickboxer and karate player Sheridan, 46, of Kingsway Park, Kingsbridge, denies possession of an imitation firearm and three counts of assault by battery.

The prosecution says he ordered the children to run faster and fired a hail of pellets at them to hurry them up, causing minor injuries to three of them, who are cousins.

The parents of one of the children have told the jury the children were terrified and alarmed and that Sheridan had threatened to shoot one in the knee. Londonderry-born Sheridan, who has won medals for Britain at European and international level, said he got his son to fetch the gun at the end of the final class before Christmas ‘for a laugh’.

He said: “I just did it for a laugh. It was not loaded at that point and I dropped some of the pellets on the floor as I put them into the magazine.

“The children were running up and down the hall. We were just having a laugh. They were going one way and I was shooting the gun the other way. I was shooting it away from them.

“I fired up upwards and into the top of the curtains so they fell like raindrops as they came off the roof and the windows. I did not shoot at the children.

“I did not shoot at them. It was just a game. It was a toy gun. One of the children was saying ‘shoot me, shoot me’. Of course, I did not intend to shoot the children.

“I treat all the kids in my class as if they were my own. That’s why I fired in the opposite direction. All the parents were laughing.”

He said he only fired a few short bursts and thought he had only fired about 15 to 20 pellets in all.

He said the leisure centre manager saw him as he left and made a joke about him being in the IRA

The trial continues.