An army veteran who previously completed a charity bike ride from Aberdeen to Arbroath has been found guilty of attacking his pregnant partner.
Sammy Stewart raised more than £3,000 last year for the Storm Arwen-damaged Arbroath Animal Rescue Centre.
Earlier this week, a court heard the 36-year-old, now of Perth, choked a woman on two occasions in 2017.
He also grabbed her hair and tried to pull her out of a car while she was heavily pregnant.
Stewart had denied the assaults but was found guilty following a day-long trial at Aberdeen Sheriff Court.
In the first incident, at his then-partner’s address in Kemnay, Aberdeenshire, on May 20 2017, Stewart grabbed her by the throat and pulled her hair after an evening in the pub.
The woman told the court she had asked Stewart to leave.
“He didn’t like me telling him to leave, to the extent I had my hair pulled and he grabbed my throat.
“It was that tight, I couldn’t actually breathe but it lasted seconds before he let go.”
She described being pinned against a door frame by her throat and her 15-year-old son coming downstairs and screaming at Stewart to leave.
Grabbed woman by hair and throat
In a second incident outside Kemnay Golf Club on November 4 2017, while she was pregnant, Stewart grabbed the woman by the hair and throat and forcibly removed her from her vehicle.
The woman told the court she had gone out looking for Stewart after he failed to meet her at a bingo hall on his return from a football match in Edinburgh.
She said her friend had gone into the bar at the golf club while she remained in the doorway.
The friend, who also gave evidence, said she found Stewart, who asked her not to tell his partner where he was but she had already seen him.
All three left and the women got into the car.
‘I couldn’t breathe’
Stewart’s then-partner told the court he would not let her close the car door so she threw his spare house key across the car park, in the hope that he would go look for it.
“That just seemed to make things worse”, she said.
The victim added: “He didn’t go for the key – he decided to go for my hair and choke me into my seat by my throat, so I couldn’t breathe.
“He pulled me by my hair out of the car”.
Asked by fiscal depute Victoria Kerr how the incidents had affected her, the woman said she had been left “mentally damaged”.
She explained: “The physical scars were few and far between but the mental scars are still there”.
Gaslighting brute
The woman wept in the witness stand and added: “He passed a lot of the blame onto me and made out like it was my fault it happened.
“He made me feel like a terrible person because he had PTSD from the army and I was the worst person in the world because I didn’t understand.”
Under questioning from his solicitor Laura Grace, Stewart denied choking or pulling his partner’s hair in May 2017.
He accepted that he had “nudged” her at the top of her chest, below her neck.
He claimed she had come towards him and added: “I placed my hand firmly out”.
Asked why, he replied: “I don’t know. I can’t give you an explanation why”.
Speaking about the second incident in the golf club car park, Stewart denied choking the woman, pulling her hair and forcing her out of the car.
Instead, he insisted that he had just been reaching for his spare key in the centre console.
He added: “My right arm was reaching over the top of her to get my key and my left arm was across her so that I could get in”.
Guilty of both charges
Sheriff Janys Scott KC said she had “no particular difficulty in disbelieving” Stewart in respect of the second incident particularly.
She found Stewart, now of Kingswell Terrace in Perth, guilty of both charges of assault.
Stewart’s sentencing was deferred until April to allow time for reports to be carried out.
Charity venture
The Courier told in January 2022 how Stewart raised more than £3,000 after making his 63-mile way from his Aberdeen home to Arbroath via several football clubs.
He said he wanted to give something back to the centre, where he got his Labrador, Buddy, by helping to pay for storm damage repairs.
At the end, he got down on one knee to propose to girlfriend and she said yes.
He said: “It was important to me to propose to Caitlin at the ARC because, if it hadn’t been for them, I might not be here and I might not be with Caitlin today.”
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