AN AXEMAN has been jailed for 12 years for luring a York man into a dark wood and trying to kill him.

Arthur Jamie McLauchlan, 23, slammed his weapon into Philip Holdsworth's head so fiercely the handle broke on the second blow, Leeds Crown Court heard.

"It is quite impossible to conceive of a more serious attempt at killing someone than this because the skull was fractured and the bone went into his brain," the Recorder of Leeds, Judge Norman Jones, QC, told McLauchlan.

He jailed McLauchlan, of Rothbury Street, Scarborough, for 12 years.

He had denied attempted murder, but a jury convicted him unanimously at the end of a four-day trial. They took just under three hours to reach their verdict.

The judge said doctors had managed to save Mr Holdsworth from being disabled.

The jury heard how Mr Holdsworth, also 23, of Lawrence Street, York, had gone to Scarborough to spend the weekend after Christmas there with his girlfriend, but had got drunk and argued with her.

As a result, he was left without a bed wandering the town centre in the early hours of Sunday, December 29, waiting for the first train home to York.

"You found him in the streets," the judge told McLauchlan. "You appeared to befriend him and then you took him down into this dark wooded area. You pretended to simply go for a walk, according to what he said, looking for drugs."

But before he took Mr Holdsworth on a trip of about a mile down an unlit disused railway line to Woodlands Ravine, McLauchlan had secretly taken an axe from his home, the jury heard.

When Mr Holdsworth's back was turned, he struck.

Last Monday, as a jury waited to start his trial, McLauchlan falsely accused an innocent man of the axe attack, claiming that he had recognised him when the other man was visiting a prisoner in Hull Prison. McLauchlan was in the prison on remand.

Police tracked down the innocent man during the trial and, just before McLauchlan went into the witness box, produced evidence to the jury that he had been in Hull when Mr Holdsworth was attacked.

McLauchlan then retracted his allegation. He showed no reaction to the verdict or sentence.

Updated: 10:47 Tuesday, July 01, 2003