Minister says sorry to gran almost killed by ‘psychopath’ allowed free by soft justice
THE Justice Secretary yesterday apologised to a woman who was battered unconscious by a convicted killer when he was released early from jail on home leave.
Robbie McIntosh attempted to murder grandmother Linda McDonald as she walked her dog in Dundee in August 2017.
McIntosh had been granted a week’s home release while serving a sentence for killing a woman in the same city in 2001.
Mrs McDonald feared she was going to die in the attack, in which she was battered with a dumbbell. Yesterday she told how Humza Yousaf apologised to her and her family for the failings of the system.
The 55-year-old said: ‘I don’t blame the psychopath that attacked me, I blame the Scottish Prison Service for giving him the opportunity to attack me by giving him his home leave when all the signs were there.
‘I won’t waste my energy on him, he’s mentally ill. I’ll put my energy into making sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else.’
With a significant case review last year having concluded the decision to release McIntosh was ‘flawed’, Mrs McDonald said: ‘It was a mistake to let him out, he was a dangerous psychopath.’
McIntosh, who was 32 at the time of the attack, had been granted a week’s home release from Castle Huntly prison.
He had been jailed for life with a minimum of 15 years in 2002 for murdering dog walker Anne Nicoll, 34, on the Law in Dundee the year before, when he stabbed her repeatedly.
After meeting the Justice Secretary, Mrs McDonald said he had ‘apologised wholeheartedly to me and my family for the failings’. She added: ‘That is all I wanted – for them to acknowledge mistakes were made so no one else could be hurt.’
Lawyer Aamer Anwar, who was also present for the meeting, said SPS bosses should now have the ‘guts’ to meet Mrs McDonald and her family.
He said: ‘Today was the first time someone took responsibility for what had happened and Linda and her family welcomed the meeting with Humza Yousaf and the apology he gave.’
Mr McDonald was almost killed in the ‘vicious attack’, he added, and she would ‘carry the scars and the trauma for the rest of her life’.
Mr Anwar said: ‘He was regarded as a dangerous psychopath, yet when the review was carried out by the Scottish Prison Service they said that Robbie McIntosh alone was responsible for the attack on Linda and that this could not have been predicted.
‘Linda does not believe this to be true. The Scottish Prison Service compounded her agony by avoiding responsibility for their catalogue of failures. He was assessed as a high risk of causing serious harm to the public in 2016 yet he was released in 2017.’
The lawyer added: ‘This issue is about making sure this does not happen again.
‘What was asked for today was for the people in charge of the SPS to meet Linda, not members of corporate affairs, not members of their PR people, but the people who are directly in charge of the Scottish Prison Service to have the guts to actually sit down with the victim and say what has gone wrong.’
An Order for Lifelong Restriction was imposed on McIntosh for the attack on Mrs McDonald, meaning he could spend the rest of his life behind bars.
A Scottish Prison Service spokesman said: ‘The Scottish Prison Service deeply regrets that someone who was on licence from our care subjected Mrs McDonald to such a painful and traumatic experience.
‘Since this incident, the SPS has taken steps to improve our progression processes, particularly in relation to risk assessment and management.
‘We remain committed to making whatever adjustments and improvements [are] deemed necessary, aiming to ensure that such a tragedy does not happen again.’