Jail for extremely violent assault

A THIRTY year old Lerwick man has been jailed for 16 months after assaulting a woman so badly that her face will need to be rebuilt.

Stephen James Gair, of 20 Russell Crescent, had last month pled guilty to serious assault at a house in the town’s Gilbertson Road, on 13 December.

The assault on his partner’s sister, who was visiting Shetland from England, followed an argument after a night out in the town.

It had been described as a “methodical” and “extremely violent” attack during which Gair repeatedly punched his victim in the head, knocked her to the ground and then repeatedly kicked and stamped on her head. Police had to use CS gas on Gair to stop him.

As a result of the attack the woman is having to undergo surgery to reconstruct her nose.

On Wednesday Sheriff Graeme Napier expressed his concern that Gair appeared to have no feelings of remorse about what he did, or empathy for his victim.

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However defence agent Tommy Allan insisted that Gair had been hit hard by his actions, so much so that he had made more than one threat to commit suicide, and in one case he had drunk bleach.

Mr Allan said that Gair could not remember what had happened that night, but had since said that he felt he deserved to go to prison for what he did.

Gair had told him that it was like a horror movie and no one deserved to be like that, and he would like to apologise to his victim. He had also given up drinking alcohol.

Sheriff Napier said that he had no alternative but to send Gair to jail because of the seriousness of the assault, and ordered him to be placed under supervised release order for eight months after his release.