Gun thug jailed for 17 years after man blasted near Coventry's War Memorial ParkA gun thug was jailed for 17 years after a man was blasted near Coventry's War Memorial Park .
Ross White was shot in the thigh and hand in the park last October.
Liam Timms, 23, was found guilty of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life.
At Warwick Crown Court , Kevin Hegarty, prosecuting, told how Timms ended up being wounded himself and needed hospital treatment - but insisted he was injured by a firework.
A second man, Jason Cornwall, of Arundel Road, Coventry, was found not guilty of the same charge.
The jury had heard that in October last year, Mr White was seen staggering along Coat of Arms Bridge Road near the War Memorial Park crying for help after being shot in the right forearm and left thigh.
A car was seen speeding away, and ten or so minutes later Timms, who had a shotgun wound to his left hand, went into A&E at Warwick Hospital, accompanied by Cornwall.
But when Timms was told he would have to be transferred to University Hospital in Coventry, which is where Mr White had been taken, he walked out – before going to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham the next day using a false name, and insisting he had been injured by a firework.
An attempt was later made to destroy the Seat by setting it alight in Wathen Road, Warwick.
Jailing Timms, Judge Lockhart told him: “The facts that are plain are that you were in a car in Coat of Arms Bridge Road.
“I can draw an inference that in that car with you was the shotgun, loaded and ready to use. This is not a thing that happened by accident.
“Another cartridge was in the car and ready for use, and even if this were a sawn-off shotgun, it would have been virtually impossible for anyone not to know that in that car was a loaded firearm ready for use.”
The judge said Mr White was also in the car, but he was satisfied he was not part of Timms’s group – "or he would not have been left in the road with potentially life-threatening injuries".
Judge Lockhard continued: “The carriage of loaded guns on the streets of Coventry and their discharge is a scourge on this society.
“Under the circumstances in which this was carried on that afternoon, there could have been no lawful use, and it was fired at a person who I am sure was not a part of your team.”
Although the shotgun was never recovered, and neither Mr White nor the two defendants gave evidence, it was speculated that it had been fired inside the car, and therefore must have been a sawn-off weapon.
Timms’s barrister Francis McGrath said his client and his partner had their first child a month ago, and he had not yet seen the child, "so the consequences of this offence have a particularly bitter sting for Mr Timms".
