A father-of-one has been jailed for 12 years for slashing a man in the face and wielding a shotgun during a degrading and sustained attack.

Louis Browning, 25, along with two accomplices who have not yet been identified, tortured a man in his 30s in Vickers Close, Wallington, in the early hours of the morning on March 12.

The gang, who were intending to commit robbery, attacked the man, who feared he was going to be killed, near a white van in the Roundshaw Estate as he walked towards a parked car, Croydon Crown Court heard today.

Browning was described as a subordinate member of the gang who was eager to please the ring-leader by increasing the level of violence and harm he inflicted on their victim.

The victim felt so upset by the humiliating assault, in which he was left naked from the waist down and suffered broken bones in his eye socket, he has been unable to return to work.

The gang whacked him with a scaffold pole over the head to concuss him and pointed the shot gun at him yelling at him to get on the floor.

Judge Nicholas Heathcote-Williams said the man courageously tried to fight the threesome off but Browning and his accomplices over-powered him, dragging him into the back of the van.

They beat him with the gun and Browning, in an attempt to please the ring-leader, sliced into his face.

Judge Heathcote-Williams said: "Needless to say he was shouting for help and you mocked this.

"You called out ‘I’m going to cut his ear off’ as if asking the driver’s permission.

"Although you were not the ring-leader you were an eager participant."

When the man resisted, Browning dragged the knife down the right hand side of his face and then called out ‘I’m going to stab him up the a*se’.

The gang stabbed the man in the legs and stole his mobile phone and keys.

Armed police searched Browning's home, in Mollison Drive, days after the attack and uncovered the foot-long shotgun hidden in a ceiling void, accessed via a gap in an airing cupboard.

The court heard Browning had 18 previous convictions relating to 51 offences, mostly joyriding but also biting someone’s nose off, robbery, violent disorder, battery and making a racially aggravated threat to a police officer.

The court heard Browning’s criminal career started at an early age joyriding in his mid-teens. He left education without qualifications and had a cocaine problem.

In his defence Browning argued the victim was a drug-dealer who had brought the shot gun to the scene and was the aggressor.

Judge Heathcote-Williams said:"You still do not accept responsibility, you still do not show remorse or reconciliation." He said Browning's only mitigating features were his age and that he had a drug problem and added: "You have a young son who will see little of you during his childhood."

During a trial last month Browning pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm and was found guilty of having a firearm with intent to endanger life, grievous bodily harm, robbery and false imprisonment following a six-day trail at Croydon Crown Court.

Browning had been with his partner of five years and had one four-year-old son with her and he also cared for her two other children. She attended throughout the trial and was in court to see him get sent down.

The victim suffers from continuing double vision, cuts and scars. He spent two days in hospital following the attack was left feeling shocked, dizzy and confused and not wanting his friends to see him.

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