Jailed for trying to kill friend

An Airdrie thug who tried to murder a friend in a drink and drug-fuelled scissors attack has been jailed for four years.

Paul Mason repeatedly struck his male victim on the head and body with the weapon.

A judge told Mason, 24, at the High Court in Edinburgh: “You used a bladed weapon and struck him at least five times with it after he had attacked you.”

Lord Burns said Mason had been prepared to use the weapon repeatedly on his victim with “devastating effects which could have killed him”.

Mason, from High Street, had earlier denied attempting to murder his victim in Ayr on May 29, 2019, but was convicted of the offence.

A jury convicted him of assaulting the victim to his severe injury and the danger of his life in the murder bid by repeatedly punching and kicking him and striking him with the weapon.

Lord Burns pointed out that the jurors had rejected Mason’s claim that he acted in self-defence and under provocation. The judge said it seemed to him that there was no evidence to support the contention that the victim ever had a weapon.

The judge ordered that he should be supervised and monitored for a further three-year period.

Defence counsel Allan Macleod said: “Prior to this he would have called the victim a friend.”

Mason’s co-accused, 25-year-old Cameron Hill from Calder Court in Coatbridge, was cleared of the murder bid, but found guilty of assaulting the man by punching and kicking him.

Lord Burns told him that taking into account his age, the limited violence he was involved in and that he disassociated himself from the offence as it escalated he could be dealt with by a non-custodial disposal. He was given a community payback order and told to carry out 300 hours of unpaid work.