Runaway groom who sparked huge manhunt jailed for firing gun at woman
A GROOM who went on the run after being granted bail to get married has been jailed for at least two years for firing shots at a woman.
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A GROOM who went on the run after being granted bail to get married has been jailed for at least two years for firing shots at a woman.
Murat Shomshe, 34, became national news in July last year after sparking a manhunt when he failed to hand himself in after supposedly getting hitched.
His bride-to-be had convinced County Court judge Richard Maidment to cut him loose after she agreed to pay a $10,000 surety.
Shomshe, who was to go to trial over the shooting incident, spent a week at large before his capture at a “pole dancing studio” in Campbellfield.
The violent criminal appeared in the County Court today where he was sentenced to three years in jail, with a non-parole period of two, and ordered to undertake a two-year community corrections order on release.
He pleaded guilty to one charge of reckless conduct endangering life last April.
The court heard Shomshe pulled a handgun on a woman in August 2014, while free from prison on a suspended sentence.
Police said he fired shots into the woman’s car outside a Coburg factory after she failed to pay a minor debt.
The victim had turned up at the factory to recover a car previously confiscated by Shomshe.
The court heard Shomshe pointed a black handgun at the woman before firing into the vehicle as she frantically reversed to escape.
Forensic police later found two bullets struck the car, including one in the front bonnet.
Shomshe later claimed to be the “middle man’’ in collecting the debt for a friend.
The gunman was jailed for seven months in December that year over unrelated offences, which also breached his suspended sentence and a community corrections order.
He was free for little over a week before being charged over the Coburg shooting incident and subsequently bailed.
Defence counsel James McQuillan said his client was using the drug ice at the time of his offending.
Shomshe has already spent 429 days behind bars.