Sex game man who shot woman in vagina has sentence cut
A man who shot a woman in the vagina in a sex game gone wrong has had his 10-year jail sentence reduced.
David Andrew Jeffers, 48, and the 46-year-old were engaged in sexual activity with a shotgun which went off at a Stockport hotel in January 2017.
Jeffers fled home to Leeds, leaving the victim with "catastrophic" injuries.
He has had his sentence for possessing a gun with intent to endanger life reduced to eight years and six months by the Court of Appeal.
Jeffers, of Berkeley Terrace, dumped the gun after the incident at the Britannia hotel in Dialstone Lane and changed his appearance by cutting off his dreadlocks.
He was tracked down to Yorkshire by police and pleaded guilty at Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester in August 2017.
His lawyers argued at the Court of Appeal on Thursday that the 10-year sentence was excessive.
Judge Mr Justice Morris ruled that Jeffers did not have the gun to commit crime and that the woman had told him that the "dangerous act" was her fantasy.
Although Jeffers' finger was on the trigger it was a "complete accident" that the antique gun, designed for shooting vermin, had gone off.
It caused the woman "catastrophic" and "life-changing" internal injuries, which had had a "devastating" impact, he said.
However, the sentence was of a length usually imposed for "serious criminal activity".
"In this case, the context was a consensual sexual encounter. There was no background of criminality," the judge said.
"Secondly, this isn't a case of the possession of a conventional modern gun. It was something like a functioning antique pistol with the least lethal in the range of shotgun pellets.
"He wasn't in possession of the gun for the purpose of committing a criminal offence. There was no hostility between the parties. She was party to the dangerous act."