Man whose testicle was blown off cleared of having the gun that injured him

Scott Benjamin lost a testicle after he was found bleeding heavily under a mattress when police broke down the door to an upstairs bedroom in which he was barricaded, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.

Two loaded shotguns and a spent cartridge were discovered in the room by the officers who had been called to the scene by reports of a disturbance at the address in Cypress Road on Walsall’s Yew Tree Estate.

The defendant maintained the weapons had been left by intruders and he had been victim of a ‘set up.’

The badly hurt 30-year-old was detained at Birmingham’s QE Hospital following the incident at the property where he had been staying.

The surgeon concluded: “The injuries are likely to have been caused by close range firing.”

During his treatment the defendant told a police guard: “Somebody shot me. I was set up.”

After his release from hospital he informed police in a formal interview that he was wounded after up to eight masked, armed men burst into the house during the early hours of January 4 last year.

He explained that the intruders targeted him because he had not repaid a £4,000 loan to a man whom he declined to name because he did not ‘grass,’ Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.

Mr Benjamin said he was ordered to lie on the floor and continued: "They started firing at the windows and I asked to be hit in the body and not the face if I was going to be shot.

"The gun was nearly touching me. Then he let it off and I just remember the pain."

The defendant claimed to know 'one or two' of those involved as a result of their build and the sound of their voice but would not name them.

Police did not find anybody else in the house when they arrived but there was a hole in the roof space between the semi-detached property and the next-door neighbour.

He kept saying the word 'loft' to the officers, suggesting that was where some of the intruders may have gone to hide.

The prosecution alleged that this story was 'nonsense' and claimed he accidentally shot himself after taking drugs and drinking alcohol.

Mr Benjamin, from Hilleys Croft, Chelmsley Wood, retorted: "Why is somebody going to start popping off shots and then shoot themself for no reason?"

He was acquitted and walked free from court after the jury unanimously found him not guilty of two charges of possessing a sawn-off shotgun and two of possessing a firearm when prohibited to do so having previously been sentence to imprisonment for six years in an unrelated matter.