A veteran of the war in Kosovo has been placed on a curfew for the next 10 months after admitting flouting a three-year driving ban twice in four days.
Perth Sheriff Court heard David Kerwin was furnished with a three-year driving ban in April 2024 and another 18-month ban a month later.
However, he pled guilty to driving while banned and uninsured on Kingswell Terrace on July 27 and then while disqualified again on July 30 on Jeanfield Road.
Solicitor David Holmes explained his client served in the British Army in the Balkans as a young man.
Sheriff David Hall placed 44-year-old Kerwin, of Struan Road in Perth, on an 8pm to 6am curfew for 10 months and banned him from driving for five years.
He said: “These are serious matters and you have a bad record.”
Dundee attack
A court was told a Dundee man hid in a woman’s house before subjecting her to a terrifying sex attack. Liam Gray carried out a sexual assault after pretending to leave and then pouncing when the woman had locked her door.
Bullets mistake
A Fife man has been fined for having .22 calibre bullets without holding a firearms licence.
Gordon Kenny, 45, appeared at Dunfermline Sheriff Court for sentencing after earlier pleading guilty to possessing the ammunition at a property in Spittalfield Road, Inverkeithing, on May 29 last year, in contravention of Section 1 of the Firearms Act.
Prosecutor Azrah Yousaf told the court a gas engineer had forced entry to a property – abandoned due to issues with mould – and found what they believed to be bullets in the living room.
Police attended and found 42 bullets in a metal tin on the living room floor.
Kenny was the last tenant of the property and did not have a firearms certificate, the court heard.
An expert said such bullets are often used to shoot small animals such as rabbits and a firearms certificate would be required.
Kenny, now of Spencerfield Road, Inverkeithing, was detained on August 15 at Edinburgh Airport after returning home from holiday abroad with his family.
The fiscal said he accepted taking a box containing a games console from his previous job and only discovered the bullets inside it when he got home.
He panicked and kept them hidden in a cupboard.
Defence lawyer Stephen Morrison said his client retained the bullets but never used them and never owned a weapon from which they could be fired.
The solicitor said: “He was a little bit concerned about going to police with them but realises now that is exactly what he should have done”.
Sheriff Krista Johnston told Kenny she accepted the mitigation and fined him £225.
Bus station sting
A 63-year-old pervert travelled 130 miles to to Kirkcaldy to meet his 14-year-old “girlfriend” but when he got off the bus he was met by paedophile hunters. Allan Cruickshank from Aberdeen had planned to spend the night having sex at a guest house with the girl, who turned out to be an online decoy.
Work knife ‘lapse’
A Dunfermline teenager caught carrying a Stanley knife in his backpack has been fined £200.
Rowan Gambier, 18, appeared at the city’s sheriff court to plead guilty to having the knife in public without reasonable excuse or lawful authority at Grieve Street, Dunfermline, on March 26 this year.
Prosecutor Azrah Yousaf told the court police were contacted due to “another matter” at around 11.30pm and took Gambier into police custody and searched him, finding the knife in his backpack.
Defence lawyer Aime Allan said Gambier, of West Baldridge Road, works for a “retail establishment” that requires him to use a knife to open boxes and he keeps it in a sheath in his bag.
She said it was a “lapse in judgement” and he accepts he ought to have taken better care to ensure he remove it from the bag when not coming or going to work.
Prosecutors accepted not guilty pleas to two other charges from March 26 alleging, in Dunfermline High Street, he entered a parked car and attempted to steal items from it and that he had a folding knife without reasonable excuse or lawful authority in Grieve Street.
Hammer flinger
A chef hurled a hammer at his partner after an argument in his Perth flat, then used the tool to threaten paramedics who came to his aid. David McCutcheon launched the hammer after demanding his partner pack up and leave while they bickered about housework. He was found inebriated and asleep in his common close the next morning and became belligerent when paramedics tried to check him.
Cleared by jury
A man was cleared by a jury of sexually assaulting a woman to her injury in Cowdenbeath.
Peter Muir, 67, went on trial at Dunfermline Sheriff Court facing the allegation from May 2023 but jurors unanimously found the charge not proven.
The woman, in her 60s, had told the trial Muir became angry and “out of the blue” he “trapped” her in the corner of a sofa and sexually assaulted her.
The woman said she ran to a nearby house and told the occupier what happened.
Evidence agreed between prosecution and defence states the woman was examined in hospital by a doctor the next day and found to have a cut and a bruise.
Muir said the sexual contact was consensual following an argument and afterwards, they had a second argument over how much she was drinking.
Asked by defence lawyer Chris Sneddon about what happened before the woman left the property, Muir said she was in a “daft” mood and said she was going to the toilet before he heard the front door.
He said he “could not believe” the allegation.
Muir, of Cowdenbeath, was absent when the jury returned the verdict and the day prior because he had been in hospital.
Following the verdict, Sheriff Susan Duff cancelled a warrant for his arrest and ordered his release from custody.
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