A ‘legal highs’ addict has been jailed for a total of 72 weeks after a string of shoplifting offences caught up with him.
In one incident, Liam Guthrie hit a woman with a bag of frozen meat as he tried to flee the store from which he had just stolen the food.
The 19-year-old, of Newton Avenue, Arbroath, appeared before Sheriff Simon Collins for offences which included breaching Community Payback Orders previously imposed in respect of the catalogue of cases.
Defence solicitor Billy Rennie said there were “glimmers of hope” in the social work report before the court.
“He has attended appointments but no meaningful work has been carried out because his life was unravelling as a result of his drug misuse,” said Mr Rennie.
“Most of it centres on ‘legal highs’, which unfortunately were only too easily available in the local area for him.
“He is a young 19 and it is a stark choice for the court today over whether to place him on a community disposal again or impose the alternative.
“There have been two periods of remand but he has no experience of a custodial setting. It is a pretty desperate state of affairs that he finds himself in.”
Sheriff Simon Collins said: “The difficulty is that he was placed on a high tariff deferred sentence to give him the opportunity to demonstrate he could engage.
“Given the very negative terms of this report, the answer to that seems to be no.”
The sheriff told Guthrie: “I am afraid these matters have caught up with you. You have been given a lot of opportunities to stay out of prison.”