Three jailed for machete attack on man in 'wrong place at wrong time'

Three men who took part in a brutal machete attack on a victim who was “in the wrong place at the wrong time” have been jailed for a total of more than 17 years.

Andrew Mooney, 38, Christopher McGahey, 42, and Darren Sturgeon, 37, acted together, striking their victim on the head and body with the weapon at a car park in Glenrothes, in Fife.

A judge at the High Court in Edinburgh said that it appeared from the evidence that the victim was not the intended target.

Lady Haldane said: “He quite literally was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The victim was seriously injured in the assault, and the judge said a victim impact statement made it clear that he also suffered “profound and long-lasting psychological effects”.

McGahey was found guilty of assaulting the man to his severe injury and to the danger of his life by a jury after an earlier trial and his two co-accused admitted the offence which occurred at South Street, in Glenrothes, on December 21, 2023.

Lady Haldane said McGahey’s motivation was money; that he was told he would be paid for threatening the man who was the target of the attack, but a “totally innocent bystander” became the victim.

She jailed McGahey, who was previously convicted of attempted murder as a teenager, for six years for his role in the attack and a further one year for being concerned in the supply of cocaine after about £2,000 worth of the Class A drug was found at his home in Rutherglen, in South Lanarkshire, on January 19 last year.

Sturgeon was jailed for five years and three months but his sentence will begin at the end of an eight-year prison term he is currently serving for causing the deaths of two pensioners by dangerous driving.

Sturgeon, from the Eastwood area of Glasgow, was sentenced last year after admitting killing grandfathers John Laird, 80, and Michael McManamon, 73, in a fatal crash in Rutherglen in November 2022 when he was “steaming”.

Mooney was sentenced to five years and five months imprisonment after the judge told him there was no alternative to a custodial sentence given the severity of the attack in Glenrothes.

The trio, who all come from the Glasgow area, originally faced an allegation of attempted murder over the attack on the victim but admitted or were convicted of the lesser offence of assault to the danger of life.