I sentence you to buy your mum and dad a new fridge
Odd punishment for son who attacked his parents
IN all of his years dispensing justice, Sheriff Philip Mann has never handed down a ruling that has caused such a chill in the courtroom.
In a lesson of respecting your elders, a man who drunkenly beat his own parents with a walking stick has been ordered to buy them a new fridge freezer by way of apology.
David Napier, 50, escaped a fine, jail or community service order this week and was instead told to buy his parents a ‘luxury item’ as punishment.
Napier has been given two months to provide a court with proof that he has bought the item, or a letter from his parents confirming they have received the gift.
Sheriff Mann told him the new fridge freezer would be compensation for his ‘wholly unacceptable’ behaviour.
Napier had previously admitted assaulting his mother, Annie, 84, and father Angus, 88, with his father’s walking stick. He struck his mother on the head and his father on the head and body.
Napier, of Turriff, Aberdeenshire, had also confessed to urinating on the floor of the family home on November 15 last year after shouting and swearing at his mother.
He appeared for sentencing at court on Tuesday, following the preparation of a background social work report.
Sitting at Banff Sheriff Court, Sheriff Mann told him: ‘It seems to me this is the type of case where you should really be compensating your parents for this wholly unacceptable behaviour.
‘It must have been a pretty frightening and unpleasant experience for your parents.
‘Is there a luxury item your parents would welcome in their lives that you might be able to acquire for them? A new fridge freezer perhaps?’
The sheriff gave Napier until October 18 to buy the fridge freezer. He added: ‘If you do that, I will probably admonish you.’
Speaking yesterday, slaughterhouse worker Napier said: ‘Life is getting half back to normal again.
‘It was just the drink. It was a normal Sunday afternoon, I had been away watching the football. I can’t remember what the game was.’
Napier said he would go shopping for a new fridge freezer for his mother soon and plans to buy it from a local shop.
Of his parents’ need for the new kitchen appliance, he said: ‘Their fridge is not cooling enough, it’s about ten years old. It was my suggestion – it was the first thing that came into my head. I’m going to get it in Turriff, I’ll get it delivered. I just don’t want to speak about it.’
Napier’s father, a retired waterworks manager, said he was attacked with his own walking stick.
He said: ‘I tried to get it off him; he had an awful strength.
‘He was up at the British Legion and he came home drunk. He wasn’t behaving himself. He was shouting.
‘He hit me on the legs. He went away to his bed.
‘We called the bobbies and they came and lifted him after that.’