As soon as Sharon Jackson heard the gunshots outside her home Tuesday afternoon she yelled to her children.

“I just said ‘Get down!'” she recounted yesterday.

Her children laid down in the hallway of their second-floor apartment on Ellington Street in Dorchester until the gunfire stopped.

It wasn’t until moments later that Jackson realized just how lucky her family was.

A bullet tore through the front of the triple-decker and went flying through her 9-year-old son’s bedroom, which faces the street.

It also tore through the baggy Celtics jersey and white undershirt he was wearing, Jackson said.

At the moment the shots rang out, Jackson’s son, Preston Jackson-Stephens, was in his room retrieving his glasses case.

“I still can’t believe it. I’m counting my blessings,” she said yesterday, standing in her son’s room where the bullet hole and tear in the Patriots comforter were still visible.

Her son seemed unfazed by what happened, playing throughout the home as reporters asked questions.

He said he could see smoke in the seconds after the shooting.

“I thought I was going to die,” Preston said.

It’s not the first brush with violence for Jackson. She is the sister of Jamal Jackson who was stabbed to death in 1995.

Jackson said she is planning on moving out of the home where she’s lived for nine years.

“I almost lost my son,” she said.

Police investigating

Police said they received a call for shots fired on Ellington Street about 4:30 p.m., Tuesday.

There they found damage to cars along the street.

Officers went to Jackson’s home a few hours later on Tuesday night to investigate the stray bullet, but Jackson said it wasn’t until yesterday morning that officers seized her son’s Celtics jersey.

A police spokesman said the incident it still under investigation.