Welder gets fine – and jail warning from Highland sheriff – after admitting 'permanent disfigurement' of man in Ullapool attack
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A Ross-shire man was hit over the head with a home-made metal weapon after he confronted his attacker outside his home.
The assailant, 44-year-old Scott Lesbirel, formerly of Newton Street, Greenock but now living in Vale, Guernsey, admitted the injury to permanent disfigurement at Inverness Sheriff Court and was fined £3675.
But the welder, who offered to pay the fine at £500 a month, was told by Sheriff Eilidh Macdonald that he would go to jail for three months if he missed one instalment.
Sentence had been deferred for a background report on the former diver who had relocated to Wester Ross for a job.
The court was told he had gone to the property in Lochside Court, Ullapool on July 3, 2020 with another local man.
Fiscal depute Martina Eastwood said that the two occupants of the house heard banging on the window and saw Lesbirel had a weapon – a bit of metal attached to a string.
"The two men armed themselves, and confronted Lesbirel who was outside in the garden.
"They told him to leave but he did not and a fight ensued. The accused swung a metal weight on a rope and struck one of the men on the back of the head.
"This caused a laceration which required to be stitched and left a permanent scar."
Defence solicitor David Patterson said: "He has a record albeit mostly historical but the common threat is drug and alcohol misuse.
"The move to Ullapool was a career move and the peer group he met had a significant negative influence on him and led him back into drug and alcohol misuse.
"This was an impulsive act compounded by the use of alcohol. He accepts his conduct was wholly unacceptable. He is now sober and on the straight and narrow."
