AUBURN — A Lewiston man who said his mother tried to shoot him when he was 8 years old, but beat him instead with the butt of the gun when she discovered it was out of bullets, was sentenced Thursday to two years in prison for robbery.

Anna York, who works with the Office of Adult Mental Health at Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services, told Justice MaryGay Kennedy in Androscoggin County Superior Court that she asked Thomas Andrew Farrington, 29, of Oxford Street to write an autobiography. He had described in detail the abuse he suffered at the hands of his parents when he was a young child, York said.

York said she could see the scars on Farrington’s scalp from his mother’s beating. She said Farrington cried repeatedly when he talked about his poor treatment at home.

His attorney, Matthew Mastrogiacomo, said Thursday that his client was 4 years old when he started drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana supplied by his father. That led to a lifetime of alcohol and drug abuse, the lawyer said.

Farrington’s sister, Meghan Moore, said she and her brother were abused by their parents, but he bore the brunt of it.

“I’m not trying to say the substance abuse and mental illness justifies” Farrington’s crimes, Mastrogiacomo said. But it helps explain his lengthy rap sheet, which includes several assault convictions.

He had pleaded guilty to two counts of robbery. He was sentenced Thursday to eight years in prison, with all but two years suspended, plus three years on probation. The same sentence on the second robbery is to run concurrent with the first, Kennedy said.

Kenneth Drum, 39, had told police he was distributing Sun Journal newspapers on College Street at about 2:30 a.m. on April 26 when he noticed two men sporting baseball caps following him. When he was near the Central Fire Station, the men approached him and told him to give them everything he had or they would stab him with a knife and slit his throat.

Drum said he defended himself with an umbrella and ran into the nearby Oak Street parking garage where other carriers were picking up their newspapers. The two men ran away and ducked into an alley behind Victor News on Park Street. Drum said he never saw a weapon.

Another witness, Daniel Konopka, 23, said two men fitting the same description approached him that morning in downtown Lewiston and asked him for a cigarette. He offered to walk to a store to buy cigarettes for the men, but they then asked him for money. He said he had none. They told him to give them everything in his pockets or “they would beat the hell out of” him, according to police. The two men grabbed Konopka and tried to pull him into an alley, but he shook them loose and ran down Lisbon Street and stopped when he spotted a police cruiser.

Farrington made statements linking himself to both incidents, prosecutors said. Farrington said co-defendant Darren Lovejoy, 23, of 149 Buckfield Road, Turner, who had been with him during the incidents, begged him not to commit the robberies, prosecutors said.

Lovejoy pleaded guilty Monday to a misdemeanor charge of assault. He was sentenced to 30 days at Androscoggin County Jail and fined $300. He’s expected to start serving his sentence on Friday.

Kennedy ordered Farrington to serve two years and nine months for violating his probation for an assault conviction in Kennebec County last year.

On unrelated charges of terrorizing and domestic violence stalking, Kennedy sentenced Farrington to two years on each count, concurrent to the robbery sentence.

Farrington apologized to the woman he stalked and terrorized.

“I was like a little kid throwing a fit,” he said. “I scared her.”

He also said he was sorry for scaring the two men he tried to rob.

Kennedy said she was sympathetic about his childhood , but pointed out that many people suffer child abuse and don’t later commit violent crimes.

“You know what it feels like to be scared, yet you did this to others,” she said.

She urged him to arrange for long-term residential substance abuse treatment for when he starts his probation.

“It sounds like you’re ready to make some effort at turning your life around,” she said.