Two men accused of attempted murder in which gunshots were fired haphazardly outside a Hamilton nightclub faced the closing arguments in their Supreme Court trial yesterday.

Devon Hewey, 26, and Cervio Cox, 31, have been on trial for more than a month for the alleged offence against Lavon Thomas, plus using a firearm to commit an indictable offence, early on the morning of March 24, 2012.

The Crown alleges that Mr Hewey was riding a motorcycle involved in the attack while Julian Washington, who was acquitted of the shooting in a previous trial, was the gunman. The Crown further suggested that Sergio Robinson was the intended target of the attack, but shots were fired at Mr Thomas in a case of mistaken identity.

While prosecutors said that Mr Cox was not involved directly in the shooting, he had assisted the alleged perpetrators both before and after the attack.

Wrapping up his case, prosecutor Carrington Mahoney told the jury that Mr Thomas was lucky to have survived the attack, in which two men on a motorcycle drew up near a crowd outside Shine’s Nightclub, at the eastern end of Reid Street.

“The shooter clearly had difficulty with his tool that morning — and that’s the only reason that Lavon is alive,” he said.

The weapon initially jammed and several shots went wild as Mr Thomas fled in the direction of the John Swan Building across the road — but “incompetence is not a legal excuse”, the prosecutor added.

Going over Mr Thomas’s testimony, Mr Mahoney described how the running man heard a fourth shot and a “pinging, metallic sound” near him.

“He said, ‘Life took on a different meaning ... it was pretty close; this was a life-and-death situation for me. That could have been my last breath there. I could have died.’”

He also noted in evidence read in from another man, Darren Thompson, that the evening’s crowd appeared to be “heavily patronised by people affiliated with Parkside” — the Hamilton gang that the Crown maintains drew the gang-fuelled attack that night.

Mr Mahoney said that after the shooting, Mr Hewey and Mr Washington sped up Cavendish Road, but were forced to turn around when they unexpectedly came across a police car. Police chased the motorcycle down East Broadway, but lost sight of it by Berry Hill.

The prosecutor said that Mr Hewey dumped the bike near bushes in Botanical Gardens, where they were joined by Mr Cox, who brought Mr Hewey to Warwick.

Police discovered the abandoned motorcycle later that morning with Mr Hewey’s DNA and gunshot residue on it. The licence plate was obscured by plastic, which contained Mr Cox’s DNA, while several items in Mr Cox’s home were found to have component particles of gunshot residue.

Mr Mahoney told the jury that Mr Hewey had lied under oath and noted that in a previous trial for the same matter, the defendant had given a different version of events as to what he did on the morning of the shooting.

He told the previous trial that he had gone from a friend’s home straight to a girl’s house, where he spent the rest of the night, while during the present trial, he said he had given a friend, Jay Dill, a lift home in between.

Mr Mahoney said that while Mr Hewey had attempted to blame his previous lawyer, he had actually changed his story because cell site evidence — which was not admitted in the previous trial — had placed him in Warwick for a period after the shooting.

However, Mr Mahoney said that the cell site evidence suggested that he had not been at Mr Dill’s house, but rather at his co-defendant’s home, possibly explaining how the gunshot residue component particles wound up on Mr Cox’s belongings.

He added that while Mr Cox had not been at the scene of the shooting, he had assisted the culprits both before and after the fact.

Defence lawyer Kamal Worrell, representing Mr Hewey, began his closing statements yesterday, arguing that the Crown had attempted to paint his client as guilty by association.

He said that prosecutors had “twisted and stretched” evidence to make it fit their narrative — a narrative that he said was changed between trials to account for the cell site evidence. During the previous trial, prosectors had maintained that there was one motorcycle involved, while in this trial they said the gunmen were joined by Mr Cox on a separate motorcycle.

Mr Worrell argued that the change was made to explain Mr Hewey’s movements, but the revised narrative still fell short of the evidence.

Closing remarks will continue today.