Ex-soldier admits glass attack in Arbroath pub

Aformer soldier has admitted glassing a man’s face in an Arbroath pub, leaving him permanently disfigured and in need of seven stitches to sew up his left cheek.

John Dodds, of Rosendael – a veterans’ residency on Victoria Road in Broughty Ferry – attacked Gareth Ruxton at Bar 1320 in the Angus town on December 1 2019.

Dodds entered the Millgate pub at 9.30pm and had been drinking and chatting “tearfully” to his victim.

Around an hour later, he put his arm around Mr Ruxton’s shoulder and plunged a glass into his face.

The 38-year-old continued to throw punches and the pair struggled on the floor, before eventually being split up by members of the public.

Blood-spattered Dodds was frogmarched by a friend of the victim to Arbroath police station, having stated immediately he would hand himself in of his own accord.

The pair waved across two officers en route and he confessed to the attack, stating: “I must have punched him with a glass in my hand.”

Dodds’ victim was later found in a side street, bleeding “profusely” from the 5cm gash and was taken to Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. There, he received seven stitches to his left cheek under local anaesthetic and says he has been left to live with piercing jolts of pain surging from the scar on a near weekly basis.

Depute Fiscal Lora Apostolova said: “While walking to the police station, they flagged down two officers.

“Mr Ruxton reported loss of feeling and numbness around the scar and three or four times a month he gets extremely sharp shooting pains.”

Appearing at Dundee Sheriff Court on Tuesday, Dodds pled guilty to assaulting Mr Ruxton, grabbing him by the neck, striking him on the head and struggling with him to his severe injury, permanent disfigurement and impairment.

The charges were described by Sheriff Richard MacFarlane as “serious”.

Dodds had been diagnosed with PTSD two years earlier and had been seeking treatment at the time of the attack.

He has previously been convicted of a violent crime while serving in the Army in 2009 and was released on bail from Forfar Sheriff Court less than a month before the violent outburst.

He was released on bail again for a criminal justice social work report and is scheduled to be sentenced on May 18.

“I must have punched him with a glass in my hand