A man smashed a moving car’s rear screen with a metal pole in a “significant road rage” Angus incident after pursuing the other driver who he believed had hit his parked vehicle.
Andrew Woods had shouted threats from the window of his flat in Forfar’s Restenneth Drive on October 26 last year when he believed he saw the Rover 45 reverse into his car in the early afternoon incident.
Depute fiscal Jill Drummond told the town’s sheriff court the 31-year-old then came “screeching” round the corner of a cul-de-sac in his car and got out brandishing a metal pole.
The driver of the other vehicle manoeuvred around Woods, but as he was passing the accused smashed the windscreen, then the rear window.
”The complainer continued to drive and as he approached South Street he told his passenger to get out and run,” added Ms Drummond.
Woods was still following the complainer, but got caught in traffic and the he was able to get away, the court heard.
Defence solicitor Billy Rennie said his client maintained there had been damage caused to his vehicle.
“It’s an extraordinary reaction if there was nothing to draw Mr Woods’ attention to vehicle of a complainer he didn’t really know before this,” he said.
The solicitor said the accused believed the other car had been there to visit the house of a person he had good reason to suspect had been supplying heroin.
“The culmination of these matters then results in what can only be described as significant road rage,” added Mr Rennie.
Sheriff Alison McKay told Woods: “Your behaviour was entirely unjustified and totally dangerous.
“Firstly you could have injured the complainer, and secondly he could have lost control of that vehicle, and who knows that could have happened if that had occurred.
“At first glance of the photographs before the court my thinking was that custody was the only sentence I could impose in this case.”
Woods was placed on a seven-month restriction of liberty order, confining him to his home on an electronic tag from 7pm to 7am.
