A teenager who lay in wait for a friend and shot him in the face at close range causing devastating injuries is expected to be sentenced today.
The 16-year-old boy, who was 15 at the time of the shooting in Friends Walk, Kesgrave, on September 7 last year and cannot be named due to his age, was found guilty of attempted murder by a jury in June.
He was also found guilty of possessing a shotgun with intent to endanger life.
The jury took more than 22 hours over five days to reach their verdicts.
Following the shooting witnesses described the defendant as standing near the victim, who was lying in a pool of blood, with “no sense of urgency” and “appeared to have all day”.
A friend of both boys later told police that he had been planning the attack for a year but had wrongly assumed he was joking.
Riel Karmy-Jones QC, prosecuting, told the court that on September 7 last year the defendant took his grandfather’s double barrelled shotgun and drove to Friends Walk in Grange Farm Kesgrave in his father’s car.
He lay in wait for him for more than an hour and when he saw the boy, who was a pupil at Kesgrave High School, at around 8.40am, he ordered him to get in the car.
The boy, also aged 15, refused and was then shot at close range resulting in a “significant" injury to the side of his face.
The court heard that he recalled hearing a bang and falling to the ground and seeing the defendant standing nearby looking “calm and collected and not bothered”.
He suffered a stroke after being taken to hospital and had been left partially paralysed with some brain damage and wasn’t fit enough to attend the trial.
Experts estimated that the muzzle of the gun was between 0.75m and 1.5m away from the victim’s face when it was fired.
Giving evidence during the trial the defendant denied deliberately firing the gun at the victim.
He claimed the victim had subjected him to years of “humiliation and fear” and said he had planned to kidnap him and threaten him with a gun to teach him a lesson.
The boy is expected to be sentenced by Judge Martyn Levett at Ipswich Crown Court this morning.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here