Community service for drunk youth after severe bottle attack

A man was attacked with a beer bottle by one of a gang of youths at a Glenrothes underpass.

Ewen Beckles was left bleeding heavily from the head after he confronted the youngsters over a racial insult.

A 17-year-old boy assaulted him, repeatedly punching him and striking him with the bottle.

At Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court the teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was placed on a community payback order and ordered to undertake 140 hours of unpaid work.

He pleaded guilty to assaulting Mr Beckles to his severe injury in Boblingen Way on August 25 last year.

The youngster also admitted two charges of acting in a threatening and abusive manner, throwing tins at parked cars and damaging one car at Asda, Glenrothes, on August 3 and breaching a bail condition on August 29.

The court heard that when Mr Beckles and his friends passed the large group at the underpass near Cos Lane one of them used a racially offensive term.

When he walked back and asked for an apology the teenager stepped forward and “told him he should shut up or he would get beaten up”.

Mr Beckles refused to walk away and the assault occurred.

Paramedics took him to hospital where three separate head injuries were stapled.

The accused admitted to police he had been drinking Jack Daniels, Buckfast and beer.

Sheriff Alison McKay noted that the youngster’s family had been victims of crime but said that did not give him carte blanche to behave as he had.

She told him: “You are 17 years old and you appear on what I consider to be a very serious assault to severe injury.”