By Claire Warrender

A BRAVE pensioner has told how he kept calm as two robbers burst into a Kirkcaldy news-agents where he was working alone and threatened him with a bottle.

Alan McPhail (72) said yesterday that he was too interested in piecing together a detailed description of the raiders to be frightened of them.

However, his bosses at T&M Groceries in Barnet Crescent were so concerned by the incident last summer that they immediately changed his working hours to ensure he was no longer alone in the shop first thing in the morning.

Mr McPhail was speaking after the second of the two youths involved in the robbery, Daniel Crichton (17), was sent to detention for two years at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court yesterday.

Crichton, described as a prisoner at Perth, had previously admitted assaulting Mr McPhail at the shop on August 31 last year, barging into the premises, brandishing a bottle in his face, demanding he lie down on the floor and robbing him of £100, a quantity of cigarettes and four bottles of alcohol.

He also admitted that on January 23, at Forth Avenue, Kirkcaldy, he assaulted another man, threatened him with violence and robbed him of £31.85. He admitted committing this offence while on bail.

His co-accused, David Gibson (17), of Mina Crescent, Kinglassie, admitted his part in the incident when he appeared in court in March and was detained for a year.

Sheriff Paul Arthurson told Crichton he had no option but to impose a custodial sentence after hearing he regarded his offending as “some kind of entertainment”.

However, he added that the sentence would have been three years had he not pled guilty at an early stage.

Defending Crichton, solicitor Raymond Wachtel said his client was addicted to alcohol and led a chaotic lifestyle.

Sheriff Arthurson backdated the sentence to January 26, the date the accused was remanded in custody in relation to the second charge.

Mr McPhail said he was satisfied with the sentence but admitted he still looks over his shoulder as he enters the shop every day.

He told The Courier he had been organising the newspapers for the delivery rounds at around 5.15 am, as he had done every morning for a number of years, when there was a knock at the door.

“I shouldn’t have opened the door but I had been doing it for years and I just thought it was somebody wanting a paper,” he said.

“These two men burst in. They had an empty bottle at my head and said, ‘lie down there and don’t move’.

“I didn’t even get a chance to look at them. I had to stay down.”

The pensioner did notice that both robbers were wearing hats and that one had a scarf over his face.

Mr McPhail added, “I was quite calm because I was trying to see what colour their shoes were as they walked past me, and that kind of thing.

“I heard them saying ‘give me bottles and fags and open the till’ but they weren’t interested in me and they didn’t hurt me at all. I was just a means of getting things.”

As soon as the teenagers had got what they wanted they ran off, and Mr McPhail got to his feet to see which direction they went.

“Although I wasn’t frightened at the time, it hit me later … It does affect you and I still look over my shoulder in the mornings when I come in,” he said.