Buckfast bag bandit banged up
Court dubs idiot yob ‘plastic bag man’
A BUNGLING robber cut eyeholes in his Buckfast shopping bag to use it as a mask when he tried to carry out an armed heist on a Stagecoach bus.
Hapless Stephen Robertson, 26, was found guilty after a jury failed to be fooled by the makeshift disguise he fashioned out of the plastic carrier.
They took just 15 minutes to return a unanimous guilty verdict after Robertson was dubbed “plastic bag man” at the trial at Perth Sheriff Court.
Sheriff Gillian Wade jailed him for 20 months and said: “You have been convicted of a serious offence which must have been quite startling for the bus driver.
“It was something of a botched attempted robbery but you had some sort of weapon and you had taken the trouble to cover your face which would have caused more upset.”
Bus driver Simon Barlow told how a man had put a shopping bag, with holes cut for the eyes, over his head to carry out an armed robbery on his vehicle – despite it mainly accepting contactless payments and carrying little money.
Simon said the crook wielded a pair of scissors at him and told him: “Give me all your money. Don’t be a hero. It’s not worth it.”
Michael Sweeney, prosecuting, told how Robertson, from Perth, was the villain in disguise in the botched raid last May.
Mr Sweeney said: “When you think of a man in a mask being shown on a cinema screen you may be expecting a caped crusader or another superhero.
“But the man with the plastic bag on his head is not a superhero, he’s not a caped crusader, but he is the villain in this story.
“Your normal caped crusader would do his best to try and hide his identity from the public.
“Stephen Robertson – plastic bag man – wasn’t so successful.”
Mr Sweeney said that although Robertson tried to conceal himself he was easily identified because he was wearing distinctive clothing – including bright red shoes – and was captured on CCTV.
Defence solicitor Paul Ralph said: “It has been his position throughout that he has no memory of that night.”
Not caped crusader, he is the villain MICHAEL SWEENEY FISCAL DEPUTE
THIS is the extremely rare moment when two quarrelling blue tits are caught on camera getting their claws out.
Snapper Scott Williams, 54, caught the birds fighting - with one of them losing an EYE.
He took these incredible pictures in a local park in Ayr, after spotting them come to blows.
Scott had visited the beauty spot to snap some of the local wildlife and managed to catch the feuding pair while looking down his lense.
The pictures show the two blue tits squabbling on the ground as one of them is pinned down by the other.
Photographer Scott explained: “I was trying to photograph some birds in flight and noticed these two birds having a squabble in-flight.
“They landed in a furious ball of feathers. I laid on the ground to try to get a good angle of the birds.
“The fight itself lasted for a good couple of minutes and was ferocious.
“I am pretty sure from the last photo that one of the birds lost an eye.
“I must admit, I thought one of the birds wouldn’t survive the fight.
“However, thankfully they both flew off at the end.”