Security guard tries to remove wart from finger with a shotgun

Sean Murphy, 38, lost most of his left middle finger after using the stolen 12-bore Beretta shotgun at a garden centre in Doncaster.

He also landed in court for using an illegal firearm, and was handed a 16-week suspended prison sentence.

Murphy was told at Doncaster Magistrates’ Court that the offence carried a maximum 15 year term.

But he said: “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.

“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, of 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.

An investigation showed it was taken during a burglary in 2009 but Murphy said he had no knowledge of that.

Martin Ward, prosecuting, said: “On the afternoon in question he had some drink.”

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.