Pool cue thug given 15-month sentence

Victim’s right eye severely damaged after assault

A Hamilton thug who carried out an attack on a man with a pool cue, leaving his victim with severe eye damage, was last week jailed for a year and three months.

Banned Woodhead Bar patron Andrew Mcalpine had been walking away from the pub after he had repeatedly tried to get served there when yob John Brinded hit him on the head with the pool cue.

A consultant ophthalmologist found that Mcalpine’s vision had been severely reduced in his right eye as a result of the attack on the evening of May 22 last year.

Last month 38-year-old Brinded, of Macdiarmid Drive, had earlier admitted a charge of assaulting Mcalpine to his severe injury, permanent disfigurement and permanent impairment.

The court had heard that Mcalpine had gone to the bar in an intoxicated state and was told to go away as he was banned due to his previous behaviour there.

As he was ushered out by staff shouted ‘You will serve me a drink!’

However, he returned some time later with a large kitchen knife demanding to be served before being removed from the premises again.

When Mcalpine failed to get back inside he walked away. It was at that point Brinded hit him with the pool cue.

The wound was “immediately apparent”, said the fiscal depute.

Mr Mcalpine had a 7cm deep cut on he his right forehead and bruising around his eye. He also sustained skull fractures and doctors were concerned that he could lose sight in his eye.

A scan had revealed severe damage to the retina within the eye.

At Hamilton Sheriff Court last Friday, Brinded’s agent Jackson Bateman told Sheriff Douglas Brown his client had been assessed as of “minimum risk” of reoffending in a report prepared for the court.

Mr Bateman also pointed out that Brinded accepted full responsibility for his actions and appeared to be genuinely remorseful.

Brinded had also received heart surgery, he pointed out, and had been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in 2014 after he fell off a lorry in the course of his employment.

Woodhead Bar publicans and patrons had also put together a petition urging the sheriff to show leniency, the solicitor said.

Mr Bateman, suggested that compensation, unpaid work, and a restriction of liberty order were alternatives to custody, adding: “He’s disgusted with his behaviour. It’s out of character.”

But Sheriff Brown, pointing to Mcalpine’s injuries, told Brinded that the gravity of the offence meant that only a jail term was appropriate.

Sentencing Brinded to 15 months’ imprisonment, he told him that the term would have been “considerably higher” had it not been for the PTSD diagnosis.