Four men have been jailed for 25 years each after a plan to kill a drug dealer by pointing a shotgun through his letterbox ended with the wrong man being shot.

Following an 11-week trial at St Albans Crown Court, Anthony McLaughlin, 27, of Baldwins Lane, Croxley Green, Leon Usher, 39, of Bedford Road, in Barton Le Clay, Christopher Kerr, 31, of Wyvil Road, Stockwell and Wayne Allando Holness, 22, of Cheltenham Road, Peckham, were found guilty by a jury of conspiracy to murder on Friday, December 1.

On Thursday, December 7, they were handed a collective custodial sentence of 100 years.

The victim Shaun Smith was staying at a friend’s flat in Ainsdale Road, South Oxhey, on the night of December 1, 2016, when he heard two knocks at the front door.

As he approached the door he was shot in the right thigh with a sawn off shotgun that had been poked through the letterbox. The intended target Ahmed Oke was not home at the time.

The victim suffered a wound to his leg and the court heard that had it not been for the reinforced letterbox and that he was standing slightly to the side of it, he would have been “injured extremely seriously and, possibly, fatally”.

On that night Kerr and Holness had travelled to the flat after an agreement had been made to kill. One of the men entered the block of flats and carried out the shooting.

At the time, McLaughlin was in Croxley Green and Usher was in Stockwell, South London but detailed analysis of telephone calls shows that they were involved in the agreement to murder.

The next day, on December 2, officers from the Metropolitan Police carried out a warrant at an address in South Norwood, Croydon.

The shotgun and seven cartridges were recovered from a Ford Fiesta parked nearby. Cannabis with a street value between £1,200 and £1,800 was also recovered from the car and home, and thousands of pounds in cash were found inside the property.

Holness had gone out that morning but was arrested when officers spotted him returning to the area.

Following in-depth analysis of mobile phone evidence, Kerr was arrested on June 8, McLaughlin was arrested on June 11 and Usher was arrested on August 10 by Hertfordshire officers.

Adrian Foster, chief crown prosecutor for Thames and Chiltern Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said: “This was a carefully planned, deliberate attempt to take a man’s life by pointing a sawn off shotgun through his letterbox and blasting him to death.

“Fortunately, for the unintended victim, the letterbox had been reinforced following an arson attack, a fact unknown to the gunman, and that absorbed much of the impact.

“The success of this prosecution demonstrates that even the most carefully planned crimes will be uncovered and the offenders brought to justice.”