Police ScotlandTwo gangsters who donned forensic suits and masks to carry out a “carefully planned hit job” on a shopkeeper have been jailed for a total of 27 years.
Liam McDonald, 36, and Dylan Haldane, 37, were two members of a four-strong gang who assaulted a 37-year-old man in Pollok, Glasgow, on August 13, 2023.
The High Court heard how the men were armed with machetes, knives and what initially appeared to be a handgun.
The attack – captured on CCTV footage – occurred next to the victim’s Day-Today store.
The court heard how the man ended up having to have his left leg amputated above the knee following the attack.
Both McDonald, 36, and Haldane, 37 – who have accumulated almost 70 convictions between them – were found guilty following a trial earlier this year.
Jurors heard how the victim was targeted as he “wanted to distance” himself from an organised crime gang (OCG) he had been linked to.
He was understood to be a former associate of two of the assailants.
On Thursday, both McDonald and Haldane, of Glasgow, appeared for sentencing at the High Court in Edinburgh.
Judge Norman McFadyen jailed McDonald for 14 years, whilst Haldane was given 13 years.
Telling them they would also be subjected to three years of post-release supervision, Judge McFadyen said: “You inflicted injuries on him which were life-changing.
“This was a carefully planned hit job. You are both hardened criminals.”
At earlier proceedings, the court heard all were said to be part of the same OCG with the victim and his brother “involved” in the sale of drugs.
The victim told police he did not want to have anything to do with narcotics, but “was only trying to make extra money due to his shop struggling”.
The shopkeeper and his brother had wanted to distance themselves from members of the OCG and criminality. The court last year was told both believed the attack was in retribution for this.
The victim and his brother spoke in public for the first time about the attack during the trial, which ended this week.
He told prosecutor Lynsey Rodger how he had gone out to his van, leaving his sibling to cash up.
It was there he heard a “bang” and his brother shouting on him.
Recalling his next memory, he told jurors: “I just remember waking up lying on the floor, I was lying outside the shop at the rear of the van.
“I felt exhausted. There was pain in my left foot, and I asked my brother to take my shoe off. He was in a panic.”
He said there were armed police and paramedics at the scene. He told the trial he believed he was later put into a coma.
The brother said he was pulling down the shutters as the attackers swooped.
He added: “Immediately, nothing was making sense to me.”
He initially spotted one of the assailants in a white forensic suit – he said there ended up being a total of four.
Asked by Ms Rodger what he thought was going on, he stated: “Just that an attack was happening.
“There was a second shot, and that was when it hit me the bangs were a gun.
“It sunk in. I shouted on my brother. I was frozen. There was a person in dark [clothing] making his way in my direction.
“He was saying: ‘you are getting done as well.’”
“I remember the one in the white boiler suit standing over my brother and saying: ‘You are going to die here, fat boy.’”
The sibling said one of the gang eventually shouted on the others to “stop”.
The gang soon fled, leaving the victim for dead.
He had a large wound to the back of his left knee. It was found that ligaments, arteries and nerves had been severely damaged.
Police probing the attack found machetes, a forensic suit, a green petrol can and a black rucksack in a bin in Glasgow’s Shawlands.
A black handled revolver – capable of discharging blanks – was also discovered in an overgrown area of a garden.
The item was not an illegal weapon and can be “freely possessed”, although it would have the appearance of a proper firearm.
McDonald and Haldane had denied involvement, taking the case to trial.
But fellow gang member William Dickson, 39, pled guilty last year and was later jailed for more than nine years.
Richard Dunn, 46, had also stood trial, but jurors returned not-proven verdicts.
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