A teenager who drank two bottles of vodka before committing an assault in a Perthshire park has been told he consumed a “completely preposterous” amount of alcohol.
Sheriff Robert McCreadie expressed incredulity at the amount drunk by Graham Hope, who could remember little of the circumstances surrounding his assault on another teenager.
“What madness makes someone take two bottles of alcohol at one time?” he asked.
Sheriff McCreadie warned him he faced brain and liver damage consuming alcohol in this volume and had “just poured it down his throat.”
Hope (18), of Hatton Place, Blairgowrie, admitted on Tuesday that on July 25 at Davie Park, Rattray, he assaulted Struan Taylor, c/o Tayside Police and punched him repeatedly on the face and brandished a metal dog lead at him.
Depute fiscal Stuart Richardson said it was just after midnight when the 18-year-old victim was escorting a young woman home through the park that he met Hope, whom he knew.
“An argument broke out — it is not clear what that was about — and Hope was in possession of a metal dog lead which he produced and began brandishing,” Mr Richardson said.
Hope punched the victim and as he was wearing a ring it caused a laceration near his eyebrow, the court heard.
Defence solicitor Mike Tavendale said his client was 17 at the time and had just gone through a difficult spell as his girlfriend had had a child which died after only a few weeks.
The assault happened around three or four weeks after the infant’s death and his relationship with his girlfriend had fallen apart.
“On this night he had taken alcohol to excess. He can remember very little about this incident and can’t recall what the argument was about,” the solicitor said.
Sheriff McCreadie said it was “frightening” he couldn’t remember the incident and that he had taken “completely preposterous” levels of alcohol with no apparent understanding of the consequences.
The consequences of his actions could have been much more serious, he told the unemployed, first offender.
Deferring sentence until September 19 for him to be of good behaviour Sheriff McCreadie said, “It is up to you, Mr Hope, to show you can act in a responsible way.”