Stalker council boss ordered to stay out of town

A COUNCIL boss who took a 65-mile detour to work so he could stalk his former partner has been banned from her entire town.

Ronnie Hunter, 56, became so obsessed he even tried to buy a home on his victim’s street.

The finance manager ‘frightened the life out of’ Annabelle Cameron for several months, a judge heard.

At Stirling Sheriff Court yesterday, Hunter was ordered to ‘stay away’ from his ex-partner and her home town of Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire, for 18 months, and was sentenced to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work.

Sheriff Simon Collins also rejected a plea by Hunter, who has represented Scotland and Great Britain as a runner, to be allowed to train at the area’s Dumyat Hill – 30 miles from his home in Glasgow’s Garnethill.

The judge said: ‘Mr Hunter has all of Scotland to train in. He does not have to use this particular part of this particular town.’

Chartered banker Hunter, who works for City of Edinburgh Council, was convicted in May of stalking Miss Cameron, 57, and of loitering at her home ‘almost daily’ and staring at her, between April and November of last year. He had denied the charges.

His lawyer, Stephen Maguire, said Hunter’s career was now at risk, adding: ‘There are implications potentially in respect of his professional life. The fallout from that is yet to be clarified.

‘There was a misunderstanding about Miss Cameron’s feelings.’

The court heard Miss Cameron, a social services planning and commissioning officer for Clackmannshire Council, dated Hunter

‘He just wouldn’t go away’

for almost three years. But when she ended things last year, he ‘wouldn’t accept it was over’.

He would drive almost daily from his home to Miss Cameron’s street and park there rather than at the ‘large and more convenient’ free car park at the town’s railway station, where he would get a train to his Edinburgh office.

He also began training and coaching with a local running group and came close to exchanging missives on a house on Miss Cameron’s road, where properties cost more than £300,000.

She said Hunter had ‘frightened the life out of her’ and told how she had to seek counselling.

She said she did not know why he was ‘wandering the streets’ and ‘hanging about with a clipboard’ near her home after their split.

Miss Cameron said: ‘His car was in my street so often. I was living on my nerves, falling apart.

‘He just wouldn’t go away. I dreaded coming home.’

Sheriff Collins noted that Hunter, a first offender, had ‘persisted in a serious offence’ for months. He said: ‘He has to stay away from this woman and the areas where she lives.

‘In many such cases, a similar offence would require the court to pass a custodial sentence.’

But Sheriff Collins instead issued a community payback order with unpaid work and an 18-month non-harassment order, saying it was a direct alternative to prison.

Leaving court, Hunter – a former pupil of private Morrison’s Academy in Crieff, Perthshire – refused to discuss the case, saying: ‘No comment, thank you.’

Hunter has worked for City of Edinburgh Council for more than 11 years. A spokesman confirmed he is still on the payroll, adding: ‘This a personal matter.’