Two men who carried out a vicious machete attack which left their victim maimed were jailed for five years yesterday.

Harron Lee Powell Evans, 31, of Mount Hills Mews, Pembroke, and Akono Shakir Parsons, 24, of Two Way Lane, Pembroke, were found guilty by a unanimous jury last month of wounding Kuma Smith with intent to do him grievous bodily harm.

Mr. Smith had his finger chopped off and was sliced with a machete and hoe after being ambushed in broad daylight in Devonshire on January 5, 2005.

Puisne Judge Norma Wade-Miller sentenced both to five years imprisonment yesterday for the wounding conviction.

The pair also received 18-month jail terms — Evans for wilful damage and possessing an offensive weapon and Parsons for possessing an offensive weapon and common assault — to run concurrently.

The four-week trial of Evans and Parsons heard how they jumped on motorbikes and pursued Mr. Smith in the Deepdale area.

A jury of 11 heard that the pair forced a truck to stop, leapt into the back and attacked the 30-year-old with the bladed weapons.

The victim was in hospital for about five days after emergency surgery.

Prosecutor Carrington Mahoney said various strikes led to Mr. Smith’s left little finger being chopped off.

His arm was also broken in the incident and he suffered a cut to his left arm so deep that it fractured one of the bones in his forearm.

At the sentencing, Mr. Mahoney also said that a machete chop to Mr. Smith’s head had left him scarred and with memory loss.

As a result of this wound, he said, the victim may experience seizures.

Both Evans’ and Parson’s defence attorneys — Victoria Pearman and Rick Woolridge respectively — had argued that the men should be given lighter sentences.

Ms Pearman suggested her client, a father-of-three, be sentenced in the three- to four-year range, arguing that he could not be definitively tied to the worst of Mr. Smith’s injuries and, making caged references to a social inquiry report prepared pre-sentencing, pointing out his troubled family background.

Mr. Woolridge argued that Parson might be best dealt with by a fine or suspended sentence rather than imprisonment.

However, Mrs. Justice Wade-Miller rejected these arguments and opted to sentence the men within the range requested by the Prosecution, of five to eight years or more.

Jamiko St. Clair Nole Gibbons, 25, of Happy Dale Road, Devonshire, was also sentenced to six months in jail yesterday for his part in the attack. He was convicted earlier on his guilty pleas to charges of possessing an offensive weapon and common assault.

Lawyer Craig Attridge, for Gibbons, asked that his client — “a man of previously unblemished character” who had already served seven months in custody for his part in the attack — be given a fine.

But Mrs. Justice Wade-Miller said incarceration was the only possible sentence for the men in order to mark the gravity of the offences and deter others who might act in the same way.

During the trial of Evans and Parsons, their charges were downgraded from attempted murder.

The judge ordered the jury to find a fourth man, Davon Michael Marson, 29, not guilty of attempted murder and possession of an offensive weapon, saying the evidence did not support the charges against him.