Gary Treeby limped into court yesterday leaning on a stick and told of the moment he was beaten and shot in the leg.

Mr Treeby, who as well as owning Broadview Farm in Lidsing has a house in Princes Park, Chatham, said he and his brother Jack had earlier taken Jack Jnr, known as Jacko, home to Coombe Road, Tovil.

They were returning to the farm, he said, when Jack received a phone call from his brother-in-law.

They went back to Tovil to check on Jacko and then went to his sister Mary’s home in Quarry Road.

He stood outside the house drinking a cup of tea with Jack and sisters Alison and Mary Treeby and Caroline Morris.

“The next I knew I felt something hit my leg and I fell to the floor,” he said. “I heard a bang. I was shot in the leg. I remember falling to the floor, I remember being beat.

“I felt something hit me on the top of my head. I remember a few of them beating me.”

Asked by prosecutor Jonathan Higgs who he was talking about, he replied: “Those in the dock over there.”

Mr Treeby said he could remember George Treeby laughing at him. “I know his laugh,” he said.

Charity Treeby was there. “She was hitting me with something,” he continued. “It was something flat. I was lying down by this car.

“I lifted my left arm up to protect my face. She was hitting me a few times on my arm and other bits of my body. There was a few of them beating me.”

Mr Treeby said two of his attackers were wearing balaclavas, while Charity and George Treeby did not have their faces covered.

“I heard a car,” he said. “I heard someone say 'Let me in’. It was big Bill, my brother.

"The next thing I remember is a police lady running up and helping me.”

He was taken to Maidstone Hospital and then transferred to the Royal Hospital in London.

He said he had a hole in his leg. A bone was shattered and a pin had to be inserted from his hip to his kneecap.

He also had a broken left arm and cuts to his head and arms.

“I walk with a limp now,” he said. “I have only just started to get on one stick. At first, I was on crutches.”

Gary Treeby became angry when questioned by Bill Treeby’s QC John Coffey.

Mr Treeby was being asked about his brother Jack’s reaction to Billy Jnr grassing on him about benefit fraud in the Harrow pub in Lidsing on Christmas Eve.

He said he rang Jack to tell him what had been said and he “went off his head about it”.

Raising his voice, he added: “They murdered my brother, end of story. They mowed him down like anything. I got half beat to death.”

Asked what would have happened to little Bill, he replied: “I don’t know. If I was going to do anything, I would have done it that night in the pub.”

He agreed he had told police in a statement: “It would have gone without saying little Billy would have had a slap coming his way from Jack.

“It would not have been necessary to go looking for him. Whenever we next came across him would have been good enough.”

Mr Treeby said it would have been up to his brother to deal with the matter.

“I know he done wrong,” he said of Billy. “He never grassed me up did he?”

Mr Coffey suggested Mr Treeby had threatened to “burn out” Bill senior’s home, Fairhaven in Paddock Wood, and that was what had happened to it.

Mr Treeby said he did not know that. Billy Jnr, he said, had threatened to burn him out.

He asked the QC: “So what are you saying, because of a little argument it is all right to kill someone?”

Mr Treeby looked at stills of CCTV in Quarry Road and said: “It gives an image of a Range Rover running my brother over, doesn’t it?

“To be honest, I don’t want this to come back to me. I want to blank it out.”

Earlier, he told the jury that before Christmas Eve he did not regard his relationship with the four in the dock as being one that would lead to violence. He said he got on well with all of them.

Mr Treeby said he could not think of anybody else who would have cause to set about him.

A claim that Jack Treeby shot out the back window of a Mondeo used in the alleged attack, was dismissed as “pathetic” by Gary Treeby.

Denying that either he or Jack had a gun, he said: “At the end of the day, I have been through a hell of a lot. I haven’t just lost my brother, I have lost my best friend.

“I know for a fact we never had no firearms or anything like that on us.”

He agreed with John Coffey, QC for Bill Treeby senior, he had acquired a significant criminal record, but added he had paid for what he had done.

He had been sentenced to three-and-a-half years youth custody in 1988 for grievous bodily harm with intent and other offences.

“Has that anything to do with this case?” he asked. “My crime happened many years ago. I was young, silly and stupid.”

In 1995, he was jailed for three years for violent disorder, involving a shotgun.

“It was nothing to do with me,” he said. “Someone pulled a shotgun. Once again, I got shot.”

Mr Coffey said in March 2008 a pump action shotgun was found at Broadview Farm. Mr Treeby denied knowing it was there and said no charges were brought over it.

He again protested: “We are hear today about the murder of my brother. I thought I am hear to talk about what happened that night with me and my brother, not about other issues.”

He denied he and Jack wanted to get Billy Jnr to Quarry Road to “damage” him because he was a grass.

“If I was going to attack him or do anything, I would have done it on that night in the pub - job done innit?” he added.