A YOUNG woman had a lucky escape when what she believed to be a ‘stray bullet’ missed her by inches and turned a routine journey to work into a near-death experience.

Katie Higgins, 18, was heading to work in Bowness on the A591 with her boss David Lewis when there was a ‘massive explosion’ in the car.

Police confirmed they were treating last Thursday morning’s incident ‘very seriously’ and patrol teams had spent all day the area searching near to Prizet for anyone behaving suspiciously or carrying a firearm.

But they were unable to confirm whether it was a bullet that had penetrated the bodywork of the vehicle as it was still in the car. A police spokesman said it was up to the owner of the vehicle to pay for the dismantling of the bodywork to establish whether the missile was a bullet.

“I just screamed: ‘Oh my God’”, said Miss Higgins. “It was a loud metallic bang, far too loud to be a stone, and when I saw the hole you could just tell that it was from a bullet. Everyone who has seen it has said the same.”

“It only really hit me when I got home from work that day just how lucky I had been. If we’d have been going just that little bit faster, I don’t think I would be here today. It was about 9am so it’s just really weird that someone would be shooting a gun at that time.”

The car in which they were travelling was between the BP garage at Prizet and the south Kendal turn-off when the windscreen shattered. They discovered a large hole in the frame above the passenger door near to where Miss Higgins had been sitting.

“It’s just an incredibly bizarre situation,” said Mr Lewis, who runs a business in Bowness. “This must be a one in a billion chance but things have happened like this in other parts of the country, where people have ended up being injured by stray bullets.”

“I wouldn’t want people to think they can’t go to the Lakes because there are poachers with guns. It’s certainly not indicative of this area at all.”

The incident happened in the same week that builder Peter Hesford, 61, was left in a serious condition in hospital after being hit by a stray bullet while gardening in Chorlton, Manchester.