Gunman blasts off own finger - just to remove a wart
SECURITY guard Sean Murphy blasted off his own finger - after using a shotgun to try to remove a wart.
Some people try ointments from the pharmacist. But Sean Murphy decided on the firepower of a 12-bore Beretta at a Doncaster garden centre.
The result? The wart consigned to history, along with most of the middle finger of his left hand.
Murphy, aged 38, landed in court after his actions, but left court with cause for a double celebration - he avoided going straight to jail for illegal possession of a firearm and does not mind losing a digit if it meant getting rid of the troublesome wart.
After leaving Doncaster Magistrates’ Court with a suspended 16-week prison sentence, a smiling Murphy said: “I’m happy with that.
“I know I could have gone to jail for up to 15 years for a firerams offence. My solicitor did a very good job.
“The best thing is that the wart has gone. It was giving me lot of trouble.”
Murphy, a security officer at Markham Grange Nurseries, Brodsworth, at the time of the incident in March, has since lost his job. He had suffered with the wart on the joint closest to the tip of his middle finger for more than five years.
He said: “It was hurting a lot and causing my finger to bend. I’d been to the doctors and tried all sorts of things but it wouldn’t go.”
The wart was as big as his thumbnail: “I didn’t expect to lose my finger as well when I shot it but the gun recoiled and that was it. The wart was gone and so was most of my finger. There was nothing left, so no chance to re-attach it.”
Murphy, now living in Kings Road, Doncaster, pleaded guilty to theft of the shotgun by finding and possessing it without a valid firearms certificate.
Police were called to Markham Grange on the afternoon of March 13 to discover an injured man with a missing finger. He told them he had used a shotgun he had found in a hedge bottom near the nursery three months earlier.
A police investigation showed it was taken during a burglary at Auckley in 2009 but Murphy said he had no knowledge of the burglary.
“On the afternoon in question he had some drink,” said Martin Ward, prosecuting.
Richard Haigh, defending, said Murphy had been ‘a victim of his own stupidity’ when domestic pressures got to him.
District Judge Jonathan Bennett told the defendant: “I don’t know what was going on in your mind.”
Murphy was also ordered to complete 100 hours of unpaid community work and pay costs of £100.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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