A knife-wielding thug has been warned to expect a significant sentence of detention after a court saw shocking CCTV footage of him threatening four police officers with the foot-long weapon in a busy Angus street.
Mark Smith cut one PC with the Bowie knife before holding the serrated blade at the neck of a man he used as a shield against the officers’ efforts to quell him with CS spray, yards from Sunday night drinkers in Forfar High Street.
The attack had been sparked by Smith’s altercation with two sisters he had earlier threatened to kill, before he left the town centre to return soon after with the blade tucked into the belt of his trousers.
Smith (20) will return to court next month after a sheriff ordered a clinical psychologist’s report into the state of the Polmont prisoner’s mind, but the young man who already has a serious indictment conviction has been told to expect a lengthy spell behind bars.
Appearing at Forfar Sheriff Court on Thursday, Smith admitted an indictment alleging that on October 24 at the Old Mason’s Bar in West High Street he breached the peace by waving a lighted cigarette lighter in the face of a woman, and placed her and another woman in a state of fear and alarm. He also pleaded guilty to assaulting an unknown male in East High Street, Forfar, by seizing him by the neck, threatening to kill him and struggling with him.
Smith further admitted possessing the knife in a public place, repeatedly brandishing it and attempting to strike one police officer, assaulting another by striking him on the hand with the weapon, and a separate charge of assaulting four police officers by repeatedly brandishing the knife, lunging at them and attempting to strike them.
Depute fiscal Hannah Kennedy said the incident took place around 10.30pm and began when Smith approached two women in the bar, both of whom were known to him.
“He approached them and apologised initially in relation to an incident regarding their sister in 2008 relating to a previous conviction for wilful fire-raising. The two sisters did not want to have anything to do with him and the accused walked off,” said the fiscal.
One of the women was then hit with a glass, and although it could not be proved that Smith had thrown it, he then followed them to another pub where he waved the lighter in the face of one.
The fiscal said Smith told the women, “I’ll do what I did to your sister. I should have killed your sister and nephew and I’m going to kill all (of) you.”
The incident then spilled out on to the street. Smith left, but one of the women had been injured and after an ambulance and police arrived the CCTV footage captured Smith’s return with the knife. He could be clearly seen waving the knife at four officers one of whom was cut on the hand in the early stages of the incident.
Smith then grabbed another man who was known to him and held the knife to him while officers tried to spray him with CS incapacitant. Eventually he was wrestled to the ground and the knife knocked from his hand by a baton aimed at his wrist.
“It is perhaps only by luck and the reflexes that the injury sustained by one officer was not greater,” added Mrs Kennedy, whose motion for immediate forfeiture of the weapon was granted by Sheriff Kevin Veal.
The sheriff said it was a “dreadful incident in a public place which had the potential to really snowball out of control.”
“It is the case that he is looking at perhaps a significant custodial sentence and the protection of the public has to be paramount here,” added the sheriff.
Smith will return to court on March 17.