THREE men wanted by police in connection with a shooting in a Southampton pub car park are today still at large.

Officers want to talk to the trio after a handgun was fired behind The Mitre pub in Portswood Road.

Police launched a major investigation into the incident, as reported in later editions of

yesterday's Daily Echo.

It comes just two months after Hampshire police used a firearm on the streets of the county for the first time.

Armed officers fired a plastic bullet in the Coltsfoot Drive area of Locks Heath after a man was reported to have been brandishing a weapon in public.

Despite the two incidents and new figures showing that gun-related crime doubled from 2002 to 2003 in Hampshire, one of Southamp-ton's top police officers has reassured people that the incidents are isolated.

Supt Terry Stevens said: "Thankfully, Hampshire doesn't suffer from a problem with gun-related crime and, as a result, when incidents like this happen, they are treated extremely seriously and every effort is made to take these people off the streets.

"There has been a rise in the number of incidents, certainly, but a lot of those are as a result of the public becoming more aware of the dangers of such things as BB guns, which make up a large proportion of all gun incidents.

"Serious firearm incidents remain rare."

Detectives investigating the incident at The Mitre believe the men brandished a handgun at a couple sitting in a silver Vauxhall Nova parked at the back of the pub.

One of the men then fired the weapon by the car window, leaving the couple - a 36-year-old man and his 29-year-old girlfriend, both from Southampton - shaken but unhurt.

A firearms unit was called to the car park, which is shared between the pub and several other businesses, following the incident at 10pm on Thursday.

Det Insp Dave Crouch, who is heading up the investigation, said: "This is obviously a very serious incident and we are committed to locating those responsible quickly to ensure they are taken off the streets.

"There is a team of 30 officers working on this investigation. We have carried out extensive searches of the area, seized CCTV footage and made house-to-house inquiries."

Figures show that gun-related crime has almost doubled in Hampshire from 58 incidents at the end of 2002 to 101 in 2003.