A security engineer accused of stealing CCTV cameras from a fire-ravaged Perth hotel told police how he entered the building through a second floor window but insisted: “I’m no thief”.
Jamie Grierson installed the surveillance units in and around the New County Hotel before it was hit by a tragic blaze that claimed the lives of three people.
The 37-year-old said he had refused to do further work on the venue unless owners addressed its dangerous and unhygienic state.
Hazards, he said, included rooms filled with rubbish bags, electrical cables hanging from ceilings and some staff affected by drink and drugs.
Grierson is on trial at Perth Sheriff Court accused of breaking in to the hotel in February 2023 – just weeks after the fire – and stealing the CCTV units he had previously installed.
‘I didn’t touch anything else’
On day three of his trial, the court was shown the second part of a recording of a police interview following Grierson’s arrest on suspicion of theft and housebreaking.
He told police he had the “really stupid” idea to go back to the Perth hotel and see if there was a way of retrieving his cameras after the venue’s owner – a man he knew as Omar – failed to pay for them.
“I took it upon myself to retrieve the cameras from the outside of the building,” he told police.
“They technically belonged to me.”
Grierson, from Cardenden, said he used a ladder to get up and unscrew the devices.
On another day – prosecutors allege the following day – he returned to the building
He told police he put his ladder to one window but it was shut so he moved to another which was open and climbed inside.
He said: “I didn’t take anything else, I didn’t touch anything else.
“There was laptops still out on the counter.
“If I was a thief, there was a lot more for me to have taken.
“I was just there to take back what was rightfully mine.”
After collecting the cameras into a bag, Grierson said he went back out through the window.
As he drove out of Perth, he began to “panic” over what he had done, he said.
‘Junk everywhere’
Grierson said at the time he did not know police were still monitoring the building.
He said he had been planning to speak to them about the state of the hotel in the lead-up to the fire.
The trial previously heard how Grierson halted installation work because of the conditions.
“We were in rooms downstairs and it became apparent they weren’t the most hygienic,” he told police interviewers.
“There was rooms full of rubbish bags, there was junk everywhere.
“You couldn’t walk anywhere without breathing in flies.”
He said there were “electrical cables hanging loose everywhere”.
Grierson said he spoke to a member of staff about tidying up the building.
“I genuinely think the guy was drunk, I could smell alcohol on him.”
He described a female employee as a “user or a junkie, if you like”.
“She had people coming back and forth at night,” he said.
In the early hours of January 2 2023, fire swept through the city centre block and claimed the lives of sisters Donna Janse Van Rensburg, 44, and Sharon McLean, 47, from Aberdeen, and Edinburgh man Keith Russell, 38.
Grierson denies stealing cameras from the hotel on February 14 and 15 that year.
The trial before Sheriff Clair McLachlan continues in April.
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