IT was an armed robbery that was planned by text message and carried out by children as young as 13.

No one except for the five boys who took part in the crime will ever really know what possessed them to hold up a newsagent’s at gunpoint.

What started off as a youthful brag to rob the shop of “crunk juice and fags”

snowballed into a terrifying armed raid that left a shopkeeper with crippling psychological damage.

In the event it took just 70 seconds to complete the unsophisticated hold-up at News, Food and Wine Newsagent’s at Spring Road in Southampton.

But those actions led to the five friends, who had not one previous conviction between them, now beginning prison terms of 18 months each as the reality of what they did was handed down at Southampton Crown Court.

And as they were each jailed parents, families and friends in a packed public gallery openly wept and shouted how much they loved them as they were led into custody.

Such was the seriousness of their offence and the impact the crime had on their victim the judge lifted legal restrictions that protected the identity of the teenagers.

Prosecutor Simon Privett described how on June 30 Gurdeep Singh was on his own in the shop he ran when he was targeted by the gang.

Billy Woodford, aged 14 at the time, and Daniel Flint aged 15 at the time, went in first posing as customers, before Jordan Tennant, Iain Crook and Joshua Quinn followed – using hats and scarves to cover their faces.

Almost at once Mr Singh, a father of two, was faced with a gun pointed straight at him. Little did he know that Quinn, the boy holding it, was just 14.

He demanded cigarettes from the terrified shopkeeper, said Mr Privett, before his 13-year-old accomplice Crook took over the demands telling him to “put all the fags in the bag… cash as well”.

The three then left before Mr Singh ushered Woodford and Flint, who he wrongly thought were innocent bystanders, out of the store and called the police.

Later he was to tell officers how he thought he would be shot. “All I could think of was the gun, so I did as I was told,” he said.

Mr Privett said since that day he has suffered from flashbacks, broken sleep and nightmares, is unable to communicate properly and is unable to leave the house on his own.

Mr Singh’s inability to work has had a dramatic effect on his family’s livelihood, he added.

The gang walked a short distance from the scene of their crime and then set about dividing up the proceeds of what they had stolen: £140 in cash, 300 cigarettes and five packets of tobacco.

Evidence gathered later by police showed a series of text messages between the gang in the days after to sort out their alibis and dispose of the gun that turned out to be an antique 1950s air gun that had been found by Quinn’s stepfather years earlier in the New Forest and taken home.

All five were arrested on the same day and charged with robbery, which they all admitted.

In sentencing them to 18 months detention Judge Patrick Hooton said he had mentally exhausted all other options rather than custody but the crime was of such seriousness he had no other option. “I have heard your mitigation that any term of custody would be catastrophic for you. The effect of what you did to Mr Singh is already catastrophic,” he said.