Hammer-attack family now waiting for justice

The family of a Fife artist who was attacked with a hammer in his own home more than a year ago have spoken of how they are trying to rebuild their lives.

Attempted-murder victim Steven Davidson was left with permanent brain damage after his neighbour Barry Madley assaulted him with a hammer on Valentine’s Day 2020.

He now uses an electric wheelchair and is a resident of Methil’s Forth View care home.

However, neither he nor his family have given up hope of living together or reuniting Steven with his son Syd, 12, in Canada.

Steven, 48, who had been a talented painter and keen guitarist, moved to Windsor in Ontario, Canada, in the mid-90s before returning to Fife – he originally hails from Methilhill – in 2017.

Mum Margaret and sister Donna’s immediate aim is to have Steven at their family home again on a full time basis.

Currently he is brought over by taxi every Sunday, but Margaret hopes to have suitable accommodation secured by Christmas time.

Earlier this month, Barry Madley pled guilty to attempting to murder Steven by repeatedly striking his head with the hammer at his home in Stewart Court, Methil.

Margaret, 65, believes Madley was inside Steven’s home when she tried to visit him on that evening.

She said she had been speaking with Steven on the phone when his door buzzer sounded.

When she turned up a short time later, she found a close door had been broken and Steven’s door was locked, with no reply to her calls through the letterbox.

She said: “I got this wave that there’s something wrong. Mother’s instinct – I was feeling sick.”

Margaret received a notification on her phone asking if it was her son who had just been taken away

from Stewart Court in an ambulance. She and Donna then rushed to Kirkcaldy’s Victoria Hospital.

She said: “It was like he had burgundy hair. I’ve never forgotten his eyes – they were just black, it was horrible. I can’t explain it, they weren’t there.”

Steven, who had managed to phone a neighbour, had a CT scan and was taken immediately to Edinburgh.

Margaret said: “He was in a coma and he’d been sick in his lung and he wasn’t breathing – nobody knows how long for.”

During a nine-hour operation, he had three steel plates fitted in his head.

He remained in a coma for 17 days.

Margaret explained that when Steven awoke, he

could not let her go and had been stammering the three words “Baz,” “murder” and “hammer.”

Steven spent time in intensive care and high dependency units in Edinburgh before being moved back to Kirkcaldy and then the Sir George Sharp Unit at Cameron Hospital, a neurorehabilitation unit.

He moved into Forth View in March 2020, days after the coronavirus pandemic took full effect.

Now with only the use of his right hand, Steven requires an electric wheelchair.

While his long-term memory remains, he struggles with short-term memory and his family are grateful he cannot remember the attack.

Six weeks after the horrifying incident, Margaret and Donna were handed the keys to Steven’s flat.

Margaret said they could see from blood stains exactly how he had fallen but that was not their most worrying discovery.

While tidying up, the pair found an unfamiliar blood-stained sweatshirt and jogging bottoms, which Madley had cast off.

Margaret said she believes Madley was getting changed into Steven’s clothing when she came to the door.

“It’s just as well I didn’t get in,” she said.

The next big milestone for the Davidsons is July 14, when Madley will be sentenced at the High Court in Edinburgh.

Margaret said: “I just want him to sit in four walls. I’m happy he was remanded.

“I’d be happy seeing him get what you would get for murder. The way that Steven has been left, you can’t get any closer to murder.”

Margaret put the attack down to greed and said Steven would not have been a target.

She said: “He’s quiet. He keeps himself to himself. He lived on £51 a week. I have no idea who would do that. He didn’t drink in pubs, he didn’t have any enemies.”

Steven told The Courier: “You’ve got to keep going.

“I’d like to see him getting the jail anyway.”

HOPES: Steven, mum Margaret and his sister Donna are focused on his attacker’s sentencing. Below, Stewart Court, the scene of the assault.