Mull woman is guilty of drink driving and assault

A Mull woman who admitted a drunken assault has also been convicted of drink driving.

Madeline McCurrach, 27, of 4 The Village, Bunessan, pleaded guilty to behaving in a threatening or abusive manner at a house nearby on November 24 last year, seizing a man by the neck and kicking him, and attempting to bite a police officer.

McCurrach pleaded not guilty to drink driving while almost three times over the legal limit, measuring 140 milligrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood, when the limit is 50 milligrammes.

‘About eight o’clock I was watching Coronation Street,’ the man told Oban Sheriff Court on Monday October 8. ‘I heard a noise outside.

‘I turned around and Maddy was in the house. It was her nan’s house previously.

‘She was well drunk. There was another car, a pick-up, in the turning circle, door open, keys in the ignition. It was not there when I came home.

‘It is such a small driveway you cannot miss another car in the driveway. I moved it the next day. I jump started it. It was flat.’

Taking the witness stand, his partner said she had ‘no idea’ when the pick-up had arrived, but it had not been parked outside their house when she got home from work after 5pm.

‘He normally comes in after six,’ she said. ‘I remember watching Coronation Street between seven and eight. Maddy just came into the house drunk, basically. I think she fell at the door. She had cider and Budweiser.’

The court heard the couple’s house was located on the McCurrach family’s croft, next to her mum’s home, and a few minutes’ walk from her late uncle’s caravan.

‘I was looking after my mum’s croft while she was away,’ McCurrach said, ‘I was staying at my mum’s house. I was feeding the animals, lifting hay bales into the vehicle and dropping them off in the field. It was about four o’clock that it stopped. I parked up at the house. It was about half five.

‘I walked out the pick-up and went to my uncle’s caravan because I felt emotional and I wanted to sit in my uncle’s caravan to drink alcohol. I sat listening to music, his old CDs. I got really drunk. I went out the caravan because I wanted company.

‘I was very drunk. I went to [the couple’s house]. I know [her] very well. I did not get on well with [him]. I was very unstable.

‘I did not drink alcohol