9:25 am, August 24, 2021
A getaway driver who was involved in the attempted murder of car dealer James McGurk has been sent to prison for more than seven years.
Don Templeton had been found guilty for the second time of the shotgun attempt on the 45-year-old’s life in Bridge of Weir in Renfrewshire, and was awaiting sentence following the retrial at Glasgow High Court.
He had already been convicted of the murder bid and jailed for eight years but that was overturned on appeal in 2019 because of a ‘legal issue’.
The Daily Record quoted Mr McGurk as telling the 2019 hearing he didn’t know who had shot him from behind at Crosslee Poultry Farm while he worked on a car.
He’d been hit with shotgun pellets in his right buttock but managed to get help from a nearby farmhouse, to where he’d staggered.
Following last month’s retrial, Templeton, 40, was given the same length of sentence, although it was cut to seven years and four months because of the time he’d been in jail before being released.
Judge Alistair Watson was quoted as telling him: ‘This was a planned operation and involved the discharge of multiple shots.
‘It is a matter of good fortune – and nothing other than that – the injuries were not catastrophic. I sentence you on the basis you were the driver and not the shooter.’
Convicted killer John Docherty fired the weapon, and both he and Templeton were captured on a fuel station’s CCTV just ahead of their Mercedes estate being seen at the farm then speeding off, according to the Daily Record.
Docherty, 49, had been out on licence after murdering 69-year-old John Boyd with pruning shears and a screwdriver at his Ayrshire cottage in 1995 for his bank card.
He was given a 12-year jail sentence in 2019 for shooting Mr McGurk.
