Two gunmen were today beginning jail sentences totalling 21 years with a warning that violent thugs would not be allowed to live in their 'fanciful world'.

Gunman Khawar Butt received 12 years for shooting 17-year-old Gemma Tuohey, pictured, and her then boyfriend Dane Anthony Barrett, 19, outside Bradford's Planet Venus nightclub last November.

His sidekick getaway driver, Dean Robert Carden, was handed a nine-year sentence by Judge George Newman, with both men lambasted for exhibiting a flagrant ignorance of how close they had come to committing murder.

The judge admitted he was still in the dark as to the real reasons behind the drive-by shooting, although Carden, of Moortown, Leeds, pointed to outside involvement when he told Leeds Crown Court the gun used belonged to a friend of Butt's. He said he was "too scared" to name anyone.

In a trial plagued by witness intimidation, Mr Newman praised the "diligence" of the police and the courage of those who stepped forward to give evidence in the face of harassment.

"You seem to live in a world in which you think you can ride around armed to the hilt, throwing axes at people, threatening people and carry baseball bats, staves or whatever," he told Butt and Carden. "You live in a strange, fanciful world if you think that's the life you can create for yourselves."

Carden was given some credit for a change of plea to guilty just as the trial was starting but Butt, of Sandford Road, Bradford, was reprimanded by the judge for "obstinately adhering" to his not guilty assertion in the face of "overwhelming evidence".

Butt was found guilty on Tuesday of two counts maliciously wounding with intent and a third of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life, receiving three 12-year sentences to run concurrently. Carden had eventually pleaded guilty to the same charges and received nine years for each, again to run concurrently.

Neither man will be eligible for parole before serving two-thirds of their sentence.

Two other defendants, Georgina Kitson, 48, of Sticker Lane, Bradford, and her daughter Kelly Slater, 26, of Tyersal, Bradford, had earlier pleaded guilty to separate charges of perverting the course of justice in connection with the police investigation.

Each was given a six-month sentence suspended for two years.