A row over a hard-won parking space when Dundee kerbsides were piled high with snow landed two women in the city’s sheriff court.
Karen McDonald (35) and Rosemary Stewart (36), both of Pitkerro Road, were found guilty on Thursday of behaving in a racially aggravated manner towards Akram Ather in Pitkerro Road on December 1.
Both women, who had never been in trouble before, had denied the charge and during their trial the court heard of the ill feeling caused by Mr Ather parking in a space it had taken several hours to dig clear for Stewart’s disabled mother.
His wife Elizabeth Ather told the court McDonald had come to her door to demand that he move the car.
“She said it took two hours to dig out a space and there would be trouble if he didn’t move his car before a certain person came back,” she told the court.
Mrs Ather said she then received a phone call to say that her hospital appointment had been cancelled because of the weather so her husband’s car remained in the space for a couple of hours.
She was slightly behind her husband as they left the house and when she reached the car he was involved in an argument with McDonald, who used a racist term, she went on.
Mrs Ather said she told McDonald, “He’s Pakistani, not black,” at which point, she said, Stewart used another racist term.
Giving evidence, McDonald denied she had demanded that the car be moved. She said she had explained the situation regarding Stewart’s mother, who suffers from arthritis of the spine, and made a polite request, but was met with the response, “Your loss, our gain, tough.”
McDonald said she was talking to a friend who was leaning out of her window to remove icicles from her roof when Mr Ather eventually returned to his car and she pointed him out saying, “There’s that inconsiderate b****** there.”
“It was not a racial thing,” she said, adding that in trying to help Stewart’s mother, “I just thought I was being nice.”
Stewart told the sheriff her mother had sat in her car for three hours while the space was dug out for her and when she tried to return later had to “drive around” because there was nowhere for her to park.
The mother-of-six said she had simply agreed when McDonald called Mr Ather inconsiderate. Neither of them used a racist expression and it was Mrs Ather who brought up her husband’s ethnic origin, she maintained.
Sheriff Elizabeth Munro deferred sentence on both women to January 12 next year for their good behaviour.