A troubled young man who threatened to stab two people with a knife has been told he had effectively volunteered for custody.
Tony Anderson was sentenced to five months in detention for the offence and two failures to appear at Dundee Sheriff Court. Sheriff Alastair Brown had been ready to offer the 20-year-old a way out and was willing to impose community service.
However Anderson, of Foundry Lane in Dundee, told the court: “I’m not willing to skivvy for free”.
The court heard he had a similarly disdainful opinion of court appearances, having told social workers one of his no-shows was because he was “celebrating a birthday” in Glasgow and “couldn’t be bothered”.
Sheriff Brown said that Anderson was “his own worst enemy” and that he had been left with no option but to remove his liberty.
He told him he would spend the next five months in a young offenders’ institution, adding that he should consider the sentence “generous”.
Solicitor Anika Jethwa said she had spoken long and hard to her client about his “dreadful attitude” and made a desperate plea to save his liberty.
She told the court: “Clearly he is a troubled young man. Family issues have caused a number of the difficulties that have brought him before court during his adult life, but he is trying to straighten himself out.”
Sheriff Brown, however, made it clear that his patience with Ms Jethwa’s client was at an end and told him: “I have some sympathy for you because of your difficult background but you cannot threaten to stab people.
“It is very serious. I am also told that your failure to attend court was a deliberate act; that you ‘could not be bothered’.
“Running the courts costs public money and I take very seriously those instances where people waste that money because they cannot be bothered to get off their backside.
“For those reasons there is no other option. You will go to prison.”
Anderson admitted sending a menacing text message threatening violence towards a man and a woman at St Leonard Way in Dundee on May 29 last year.
He also admitted failing to appear at court on June 23 and again on January 6, the latter occasion while on bail.
Anderson was led away in handcuffs to begin his sentence.
