Flats sealed off in murder hunt

POLICE have sealed off a building two miles from a beauty spot where a young man was found brutally murdered.

The body of Steven Donaldson was found in the car park of a nature reserve near Kirriemuir, Angus, last week following a ‘sustained and brutal’ assault carried out using a ‘sharp, heavy’ weapon.

The 27-year-old offshore worker was discovered by two passers-by at 5am on Thursday a few feet from his white BMW, close to the Loch of Kinnordy Nature Reserve.

Detectives set up an exclusion area, with all points of access to the reserve cordoned off and a no-fly zone imposed overhead, while officers conducted forensic searches of the car park and the access road.

On Monday evening, dozens of officers swooped on a drab red sandstone building near the centre of Kirriemuir, a six-minute drive from Loch of Kinnordy.

Uniformed police stood guard overnight before forensic teams entered the building in the town’s Marywell Brae and took numerous photographs before removing a series of filled evidence bags.

For a time, they appeared to be focusing on a small lane to the rear of the house, which connected the brae to an area of scrubland. Specialists dressed in sterile white overalls were seen to examine closely a number of large waste bins.

Police have so far refused to confirm or deny if the search was connected to the ongoing murder probe into Mr Donaldson’s death.

One local resident said she thought a young man might have been renting one of the flats that was taped off.

She added: ‘It’s awful. They have not told us what is going on but it seems pretty clear it is connected to the murder.’

Mr Donaldson, a tool specialist with ten years’ experience in the offshore industry, was last seen around 10pm last Wednesday after telling friends he was driving the 23 miles from his home in Arbroath to a meeting in Kirriemuir.

Police are trying to track down three men seen around 8pm in the nature reserve’s car park.