A man who repeatedly kicked his ex’s new partner to the head as he lay on the street during a “life-endangering” attack in Kirkcaldy has been sentenced.
James Crombie, 35, previously appeared at the town’s sheriff court to plead guilty to the assault at the town’s Craigmount on July 31 2022.
His victim needed stitches above his left eye.
Crombie also admitted assaulting his former partner on the same occasion by struggling with her and robbing her of a mobile phone.
His solicitor Dewar Spence said: “The relationship between the female complainer and the accused is a very complicated one.”
Sheriff Robert More imposed 200 hours of unpaid work to be completed in a year and made a two-year-long non-harassment order.
The sheriff also imposed a 9pm to 6am restriction of liberty order, keeping Crombie at home for 162 nights.
He said: “By what I describe as the barest of margins, I have concluded an alternative to prison is available in your case.”
8 broken bones and punctured lung
A driver who left a pedestrian with eight broken bones and a punctured lung when he ran over him in Arbroath has been banned from the road. Humza Hussain pled guilty to causing serious injury to the 66-yearold pedestrian by driving without due care or attention in November 2022.
Private appearance
Kastriot Prendi appeared in private at Forfar Sheriff Court.
The 52-year-old, of no fixed abode, faces charges of producing a controlled drug and tampering with an electricity meter, contrary to the Electricity Act 1989.
He made no plea and was fully committed and remanded in custody.
Police station breach
Fife paedophile Kenneth Bond was caught breaching a sexual offences prevention order after he had been sleeping in the Perth police station car park. Bond failed to notify police about his release from prison in January and was identified after he went into the Barrack Street station to ask officers to help him start up his motorhome.
Prison bite
A former Perth prisoner has been ordered to pay £500 compensation to a guard he bit during a violent struggle.
John Duncan, 30, from Dundee was on remand at the time and faces going back to jail after admitting assaulting the officer in June 2021.
Perth Sheriff Court heard he had been treated by a nurse following an apparent seizure while “clearly under the influence of some kind of substance.”
Duncan began behaving erratically and other officers were called to his cell to assist.
During a struggle, Duncan bit a guard’s arm, failing to break the skin but necessitating an injection of antibiotics.
The court heard Duncan, who was once jailed for smashing his BWM into an overpass on the Kingsway, has been making positive changes in his life.
Sheriff William Wood told him: “Clearly, since this incident you have turned things around and you are to be commended for that.
“But this was a serious matter.
“I think of all the risks prison officers face on a daily basis, being bitten should not be one of them.”
Duncan was also ordered to carry out 180 hours of unpaid work
Fatal accident inquiry
A Dundee-based mechanic was crushed to death under a lorry as he carried out a repair at Orchardbank, near Forfar in 2019, a sheriff has ruled. Experienced former army mechanic Gary Campbell, 29, from Glenrothes, was killed as he worked on an oil tanker. A fatal accident inquiry was held at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court before Sheriff Elizabeth McFarlane, who has now released her findings.
Racist slurs
A Perth man has been ordered to pay £1,000 compensation to a police officer he racially abused.
Kyle McGregor, 27, of Kinnoull Street, erupted with a series of disgusting comments while in the back of a police van.
He told the officer to “go back” to Columbia, where it was “full of rapists and drug dealers.”
The 27-year-old appeared at Perth Sheriff Court and admitted uttering remarks of a sexual and racially abusive nature while on a journey to Dundee police station after being arrested by police investigating a reported disturbance in Perth’s Angus Court.
Fiscal depute Bill Kermode said McGregor targeted one officer in particular and said “you f***ing Peurto Rican,” and made an explicit sexual comment about his mother.
He continued: “You’re a f***ing disgrace, go back and do your job in your own town in Colombia. Full of rapists and cocaine dealers.”
Solicitor David Holmes, defending, said his client had been intoxicated and: “He told social workers that he was embarrassed and mortified listening back to what he said that night and I can sense that same feeling from him today.”
Sheriff William Wood said: “I have to take account of the effect of your behaviour on this police officer.
“He should not expect this level of abuse. You are right you feel ashamed of yourself.”
The court heard this was McGregor’s fifth conviction for threatening or abusive behaviour in nine years.
He was placed on supervision for a year and ordered to carry out 135 hours of unpaid work and pay £1,000 compensation “to the officer you so grossly insulted.”
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