A vulnerable Wormit pensioner was left in a “pool of blood” and with a fractured eye socket after being glassed by his neighbour in a vodka-fuelled rampage.
The 73-year-old man had to undergo surgery to save his eye after being battered in the unprovoked attack by his next-door neighbour, George Cant.
Cant had been drinking vodka before suddenly smashing the bottle into the pensioner’s face.
The thug was locked up at Dundee Sheriff Court after previously pleading guilty to causing him to suffer severe injury last summer on Riverside Gardens, Wormit.
The court heard how Cant’s victim is considered vulnerable by his family and medical professionals.
Cant, 51, has a previous conviction for threatening behaviour towards the man and was placed on a community payback order in 2015.
‘Flipped’ after drinking vodka
Fiscal depute Michelle Mooney revealed how Cant “flipped” after drinking vodka with the man at his home.
She said: “At some stage, for an unknown reason, the accused flipped and struck the complainer on the face with a bottle of vodka causing him to fall back from his chair and strike the back of his head on the ground.
“He then recalled being struck one further time while lying on the floor.
“At 7.30pm the same date, a woman became aware of someone ringing her doorbell.
“She saw her neighbour, the accused, hunched over a door railing, visibly upset and crying, stating he needed an ambulance and the police.
“She dialled 999 and he took the phone from her and stated the ambulance was for his neighbour.”
Surgery to save eye
The woman phoned the victim’s son to inform him of the incident. Police arrived and entered the victim’s unlocked property.
Cant was found lying in a bed heavily drunk and the victim was found lying on his back in a pool of blood.
Blood was seen pouring out of his swollen right eye.
His son arrived and the victim stated: “George attacked me. He flipped, he just got up and hit me with the bottle.”
Cant repeatedly told police the pensioner had fallen on numerous occasions.
The man’s eye was swollen shut and suffered an orbital floor fracture.
Ms Mooney said the man was suffering from dangerously high blood pressure in his eye and had to undergo surgery to cut his eyelid to “save” his eye.
Cant, a prisoner of HMP Perth, pled guilty to assaulting the man by grabbing his body, striking him on the head with a glass bottle, causing him to fall to the ground and punching him on the head to his severe injury on July 20 last year.
Sheriff Gregor Murray jailed Cant for 18 months.
