A man who shot a teenager is innocent of the charges he faces as he never intended to kill or wound, according to his lawyer.

Dwayne Signor, 29, claims he pulled the trigger on 18-year-old Shawn Williams in a panic after being chased into a darkened room during a fight.

The bullet hit the Paget teenager in the back and caused serious injuries, although he's now recovered from the April 4 incident.

Signor is on trial accused of charges including attempted murder and shooting with intent to do grievous bodily harm, which he denies.

He's told the jury he'd never seen the victim before the incident at a late night reggae party at the Royal Artillery Association club in St. George's.

Prosecutor Robert Welling told him during cross-examination that he accepts he never set out that night to shoot someone.

Defence lawyer Marc Daniels said of Signor yesterday: "He has to live with a lot of regret and a lot of fear. Thankfully he doesn't have to live with it on his conscience that someone is dead. But this was never his intention, not then and not now."

Giving evidence in his own defence last week, Signor told the jury he grabbed the gun from amid a group of brawling men because someone was pointing it at his knee.

He said he ran into a darkened games room and accidentally pulled the trigger after being chased into the room by three or four people.

"I just panicked and the trigger went off. That's all I remember," he told the jury.

According to the prosecution case, Signor, from St. George's, knew the fighting men were his friends, and he grabbed the gun to help them out. The weapon is alleged to have been brought to the venue by Sandys resident Khyri Smith-Williams, 19, who began the fight.

Mr. Welling claimed in his closing speech yesterday that Signor turned the gun on Mr. Williams because Mr. Williams was fighting one of his friends, Jason Barnett from St. George's.

But in his closing speech, Mr. Daniels told the jury they could not convict Signor without being sure he had an intention to kill or seriously injure. He argued that he did not, and was instead acting "on instinct" under "duress of circumstances he was facing at the time".

Mr. Daniels noted that Signor, who had worked earlier that night as a bar porter at the Ovations nightclub in St. George's, was drunk by his own admission.

"There was no time to think. There was no time to process what was going on. Some of us might have frozen completely still and done nothing. Some of us might have tried to run. Some of us might have tried to reason with the person. Some of us might have tried to grab the gun and point it in the other direction," he said.

"Mr. Signor says he tried to grab it. Imagine that fright, having a gun pointed at you when you're not expecting any kind of trouble."

He added: "This is about instincts and self preservation and life and death. And with all due respect, it was an accident."

Mr. Daniels reiterated that, according to all the evidence in the case, this was a fight in a bar that went wrong not a case of the gang rivalry that's plaguing Bermuda.

He urged the jurors to put their feelings about gun and gang violence aside, decide the case purely on the evidence, and find Signor not guilty.