A Hilltown man faces weeks of anxiety after being scratched by a drug addict with a blood-filled syringe on a stairwell outside his flat.
Mark Ford of North Street has had two injections for hepatitis B and faces another.
He also faces blood checks over the next month to find out whether he has been infected by the needle that pierced the skin on his hand.
Mr Ford, 34, was scratched as he chased three “junkies” away from his close after his nine-year-old daughter had to squeeze past them while they were “shooting up” on his stairwell.
Robert Christopher Gray, 32, a prisoner at Perth, was remanded in custody by Sheriff George Way after admitting that on July 2, at a common stairwell in North Street, he culpably and recklessly held a blood-filled syringe in such a manner that it stabbed the hand of Mr Ford, to his injury.
His solicitor told the court it was a “legal high” he had been using at the time.
Mr Ford told The Courier his daughter had gone out to play with her friends and half-way down the stairs saw two women with blood-filled syringes in their arms and a man about to put a needle into his arm.
He said she ran past them and then phoned her mum from her mobile phone while she was outside.
Mr Ford said: “She was too petrified to come back up past them. I ran out right away and saw them. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life, it was shocking.
“I told them to get down the stairs and out of my closie. The boy was full of apologies but as he stood up I felt a wee scratch on my hand.”
Sentence on Gray was deferred until November 7.