News / Scalloway man released on bail after assault
SENTENCE on a 19-year-old man from Scalloway was deferred for reports after he admitted assaulting a woman with a hockey stick in the early hours of Sunday.
Lindsay Williamson, of Meadowfield Crescent, struck the woman repeatedly on her legs after he flew into a rage when losing a frame of pool.
The woman sustained a number of cuts and bruises and a badly swollen knee and had to be kept overnight in Lerwick’s Gilbert Bain Hospital.
Procurator fiscal Duncan MacKenzie said Williamson had been enjoying some social drinks at the Scalloway Legion on Saturday night.
But there had not been a huge quantity of alcohol involved: instead the “trigger” for the “particularly unpleasant incident” appeared to be that “he lost at pool and that put him in a bad mood”, MacKenzie said.
Williamson visited the victim’s address in the village, where she told him that he “shouldn’t get so upset about a game of pool”.
He stormed out, slamming the door so hard that a pane of glass broke.
He then went to his own flat and texted the woman saying he was going to take an overdose, to which she replied that he needed to “grow up”.
After fetching the hockey stick, Williamson returned to the woman’s house and, when she let him in, asked: “What do you want me to smash first, your TV or what?”
After Williamson ignored her pleas to get out, the woman decided to leave the house for her own safety.
When she refused to go back inside, Williamson pursued her and struck her on the legs four times using “a considerable degree of force”, Lerwick Sheriff Court heard on Monday afternoon.
Given he had returned home to arm himself with a weapon, MacKenzie continued, it was “not a spontaneous act of violence”.
While it is not expected the woman’s injuries will result in any long term physical effects, MacKenzie said that when questioned by police in the incident’s aftermath Williamson “did not appear to be concerned” about her condition.
Sheriff Philip Mann said it sounded like “a very serious assault”.
He deferred sentence until 17 April for a criminal justice social inquiry report, granting Williamson bail on the condition that he stays away from the victim’s house.
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