Pitlochry man jailed for killing bridge stranger

Drunk pair grabbed Russell Robertson and threw him into canal

A Pitlochry man was jailed for eight years yesterday after he pushed a stranger over canal bridge railings to his death.

James Robertson had been drinking before the fatal attack on Russell Robertson at Bainsford Bridge in Falkirk.

The victim struck his head as he fell and fractured his skull. His body was retrieved from the Forth and Clyde canal more than an hour later.

A court heard that Mr Robertson would have been unconscious when he went into the water.

Judge Lady Carmichael told James Robertson and his co-accused Mark Munro: “Russell Robertson will be missed forever by his family.”

Lady Carmichael said she had received a victim impact statement which very clearly set out the daily grief caused by the 27-year-old’s death.

The judge said: “You both participated in an act the consequences of which were unpredictable and which undoubtedly carried a degree of risk.”

Lady Carmichael said: “No one may ever know why you pushed him over the railings. The whole incident was over within less than a minute.”

The judge said that both Munro, 31, and Robertson, 27, had been drinking for some hours before the fatal attack, but added that provided “no mitigation or excuse of any kind”.

Munro, of Denny, and Robertson, of Aldour Court, Pitlochry, earlier stood trial accused of the murder of Mr Robertson, formerly of Carradale Avenue, in Falkirk, on May 29 last year, which they denied.

Both were found guilty of the lesser offence of culpable homicide by a jury at the High Court in Glasgow.

All three men had been at a nightclub in Falkirk prior to the incident and were making their way home after 3am.

Witnesses reported seeing the men apparently “play fighting” before the pair grabbed the victim by the legs.

Nightclub security manager Kevin Gibney said he saw the victim disappear off the bridge. He said: “One minute he was there and the next he was gone. The two gentlemen ran across the road.”

Robertson claimed he was walking away towards Falkirk when the man went into the water.

Lorraince Glancy, counsel for Robertson, said his wife was expecting their first child in the next two months.

She said jail would mean “he will be an absent father for a significant period of his child’s early years”.

But she accepted there could only be one sentence in the case.

A police image of James Robertson, of Pitlochry, in custody.

Victim Russell Robertson fractured his skull as he fell.