Finance chief spared prison
But he’s banned from Bridge of Allan
A council finance boss who stalked his ex, a senior social work manager, for seven months, even nearly buying a house in her street, was spared jail on Tuesday but banned from Bridge of Allan.
Edinburgh City Council treasury and banking finance manager and former international athlete Ronnie Hunter was excluded from Bridge of Allan for 18 months.
Sheriff Simon Collins, at Stirling Sheriff Court, also sentenced Hunter to 200 hours’ unpaid work.
He had rejected Hunter’s lawyer’s plea that his client should continue to be allowed to train on 1371ft Dumyat, a classic hill race venue.
Sheriff Collins said: “Mr Hunter has all of Scotland to train in. He does not have to use this particular part of this particular town to do so.”
Hunter (56), of Garnethill, Glasgow, a chartered banker and a veteran athlete who has run for Scotland and Great Britain, had been found guilty last month of stalking his ex, Annabelle Cameron, by loitering “almost daily” near her home in Bridge of Allan between April and November last year and staring at her. He had denied the charge.
Solicitor Stephen Maguire said Hunter’s career was now in question. He said: “There are implications potentially in respect of his professional life and the fall out from that is yet to be clarified.
“There was a misunderstanding about Ms Cameron’s feelings.”
Ms Cameron, a social services planning and commissioning officer for Clackmannshire Council, dated Hunter for almost three years, before ending their relationship in 2017 but Hunter “wouldn’t accept it was over”.
He then began driving almost daily from his home in Glasgow to Bridge of Allan and parking in her street, ignoring the “large and more convenient” free station car park and getting a train to his Edinburgh office.
He began training and coaching with a group based at nearby Stirling University and came close to exchanging missives on a house in Ms Cameron’s own road, Inverallan Drive, where prices are over £300,000.
Ms Cameron said Hunter had “frightened the life out of her” and made her get counselling.
She couldn’t understand why he was “still wandering round the streets” and “hanging about with a clipboard” near her home after they finished.
She said “His car was in my street so often it was like another house being built. I was living on my nerves, falling apart. He just wouldn’t go away.
“It got to the stage that I dreaded coming home.”
Sheriff Collins said first-offender Hunter, an old boy of top private school Morrisons Academy, Crieff, had “persisted in a serious offence over a number of 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.”
He said the sentence he imposed — the community payback order with unpaid work, and an 18 month non-harassment order banning him from Bridge of Allan — was a direct alternative to prison.
Stirling Sheriff Court was also told on Tuesday that Hunter had been arrested on June 5 in relation to further complaints about his behaviour since his trial.
Maguire told Sheriff Collins: “He was arrested in respect of allegations, which seem to be the parking of his car or his current partner’s car in certain areas of Bridge of Allan and in particular at the station, and on one occasion he was seen sitting in a cafe having a cup of coffee.
“That’s the long and short of it. The Crown ummed and aahed about it all day and eventually at five to four, he was given a fiscal’s release.
“Whether that will amount to anything I simply do not know but I’m not convinced of the criminality of the behaviour even given the background, and ultimately the Crown did not put him through on a complaint. I’m hoping that the disposal today will put an end of any further proceedings.”