Shopkeeper welcomes robbers’ jail sentences

Two men who robbed a Burntisland newsagent owner and “charged” at him with a hammer have been jailed.

Paul Gemmell and Stuart Graham entered Jason’s newsagents in the town’s high street and assaulted Mohammed Arshad by pushing him to the ground and repeatedly kicking him in the body to his injury.

The pair then made off with £480 from the till.

Mr Arshad was left with minor cuts and bleeding to the face and bruising and grazes to his left elbow, as well as suffering pains to his chest from being kicked.

The duo, both prisoners in Perth, admitted the robbery charge when they appeared in the dock at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court from custody this week.

Fiscal depute Jamie Hilland told the court Gemmell and Graham entered the town centre shop at around 6.35am on September 29 2020 and tried to buy items using a mobile phone but were told by the shop owner he only accepted cash.

They left and returned a couple of minutes later and Gemmell was holding a hammer.

The fiscal depute said the 40-year-old then “charged towards” Mr Arshad, who was standing behind the sales counter, causing him to fall into the cigarette counter.

Gemmell admitted a second offence of assaulting and attempting to rob a taxi driver in Kirkcaldy on a separate occasion in May last year.

The court heard he got into the passenger seat of a taxi, being driven by selfemployed Kevin Hopgood, at Kirkcaldy train station.

As the taxi was being driven towards Beveridge Road, Gemmell asked the driver to pull over.

He then turned to the driver holding a blunt object and demanded money.

The fiscal depute said: “The taxi driver grabbed the accused’s wrist and neck to try and disarm him and this resulted in the two men struggling.

“The accused let go of Mr Hopgood and fell out on to the road before getting up and running away.”

The court heard the driver believed the object to be a knife but it was accepted by the Crown to be a large cellar key.

Gemmell’s lawyer, Calum Harris, said his client had been taking large amounts of alcohol, diazepam and crack cocaine at the time.

He said Gemmell had been carrying the hammer for his own protection and it was merely there “as a prop” and not used on anyone in the shop.

Graham’s defence lawyer, James McMackin, said his client was a habitual drug user and at the time of offence had tried to withdraw from heroin but became desperate and impulsively robbed the store.

Sheriff Elizabeth McFarlane told the pair it seemed from their previous convictions that shoplifting and theft is “more of a habit than your drug addiction”.

She said: “Maybe you did not have any intention but as soon as you walk in that’s what happens because that’s what you do, and you need to break that habit.

“You are going to prison, gentlemen, given your record.”

Gemmell was sentenced to three years in prison, backdated to May 10, while Graham was sentenced to two years, backdated to March 24.

Mr Arshad said he was satisfied with their sentences and has no sympathy for them.

Less than a year earlier, the same shop was targeted by a 16-year-old who had also tried to rob the nearby Co-op and chased staff into Jason’s, where they sheltered as the teenager battered on the shutters with a metal baton.