AN elderly couple had the shock of their lives when a hoax call left them thinking their son had been shot.

The 77-year-old woman, who did not want to be named, was at her Cowleigh Road home in North Malvern with her 82-year-old husband when the sinister phone call came at about 6.30pm on Friday, September 20.

She described the male voice as being “very, very husky and gaspy” and thought it could have been her eldest son, who is 50, as he “sometimes gets quite a sore throat”.

However, much to her shock the person on the other end of the line said they had been shot and were in a park.

She said: “He squeezed out the gasps and said ‘get help’. I thought if my son was breathing his last, I had better ring the police and the ambulance.”

Amid the panic she asked her daughter, who lives nearby, to call her son’s home to check on him.

“Thankfully he was there safe and sound but it was one of the worst shocks we have had in our lives.

“There were long gaps between him gasping things, making me think it was my son breathing his last.

“If I had thought about it logically I would have thought why did he ring me and not 999.

“But you think every second counts in getting help to your son.

“Only afterwards you look at it and you think maybe I should have thought about it longer but that just did not go through my mind.”

She is now turning her attention to warning people to be vigilant when picking up the phone to unknown callers as, apart from the upset it caused, she believes it could have been some sort of scam because when she called the number it put her through to a recorded message claiming to be the Worcestershire Royal Hospital.

“We immediately thought to try and alert people, even if it only stops one person from getting trapped in conversation with them.”