A Rosyth man endangered a father and his 10-year-old daughter by firing airgun pellets out his ground floor flat window.
Dylan De Ridder previously pled guilty to recklessly discharging the airsoft weapon at his home in Peasehill Fauld on March 18 last year.
The 25-year-old first offender appeared at Dunfermline Sheriff Court for sentencing.
He said he was unaware he had fired out his window and the stray plastic pellets had not been targeted at anyone.
A sheriff warned him it was a “dangerous thing to do”, with the risk a pellet could strike someone’s eye and blind them.
Airsoft weapons are replicas which fire low-impact plastic pellets and are typically used for gameplay.
‘Apprehensive’ as pellets flew
Procurator fiscal depute Azrah Yousaf told the court De Ridder was seen “hanging a target on the back garden fence” at around 3.15pm on the day in question.
About 15 minutes later, a man was in a garden with his ten-year-old daughter and heard a “snap and whizzing noise,” which he thought sounded like an airsoft air rifle being discharged and the noise of the pellet flying through the air.
He believed the noise had come from De Ridder’s front window.
Ms Yousaf said this left the man and his young daughter feeling “apprehensive”.
They heard the same noise again coming from De Ridder’s flat, the court heard.
Police were contacted, spoke to De Ridder and spotted a shooting target on top of a cabinet in his entrance hallway.
‘Foolishness, recklessness’
At an earlier court hearing, De Ridder pled guilty to recklessly discharging an air weapon and firing it out of a ground floor window without due care or attention, to the danger of a man and his young daughter.
Defence lawyer Alexander Flett said De Ridder was not aware of pellets going out the window but accepts they must have been strays.
The solicitor said his client presented as shocked when he spoke to police, did not realise he was doing anything wrong and did not intend any harm.
Mr Flett said: “He clearly accepts there would be potential for harm being caused… but it’s not an offence of malice.
“It’s foolishness, recklessness and without due care and attention.
“He had not applied sufficient thought to what he was doing and the potential for a pellet going astray and when the pellet went astray, he was quite shocked and extremely remorseful.”
Mr Flett told the court the firearm is an airsoft weapon and police firearms officers confirmed it is an item too low-powered to require an air weapon certificate.
The pellets used are made of plastic.
Weapon forfeited
Sheriff Gordon Liddle told De Ridder: “Regardless of any explanation, this was a dangerous thing to do and it remains the fact someone could have been injured.
“It only takes a pellet like that to hit someone’s eye and they could be blinded in that eye”.
Sheriff Liddle said an act with this level of recklessness could attract a custodial sentence but he instead ordered De Ridder to carry out 120 hours of unpaid work, as part of a community payback order.
The sheriff also granted forfeiture of the air weapon.
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