A drug trafficker has been jailed for six years for hitting a man with a baseball bat on the streets of Aberdeen.
Ryan White also punched a woman so hard she suffered hearing loss.
White and his accomplice Cameron Yearwood repeatedly stabbed James McAllister and hit him with a baseball bat in the city’s Stafford Street on March 23 this year.
As they left the scene, one of them made a reference to drugs gang known as “Danny” and shouted: “I run Aberdeen”.
The pair previously admitted the attack and appeared at Edinburgh High Court yesterday for sentencing.
White was also sentenced for assaulting Tracey Wetherly to her severe injury and permanent impairment on December 16 last year, and for being concerned in the supply of drugs on March 24.
Judge Lord Boyd heard that detectives had been investigating the supply of drugs to Aberdeen from the Manchester area by the gang.
During a police raid on a property in Summer Street, in Aberdeen, cocaine and heroin worth £70,000 was recovered.
Lord Boyd told 23-year-old White he had been found with “significant quantities” of both drugs and said: “The trafficking in drugs, particularly Class A drugs, is a vile and evil trade.”
He described the assault on Ms Wetherly was an “an unprovoked attack” on a stranger.
The court heard Ms Wetherly had been on her way to meet a friend when she was assaulted by White at a lane off Spring Gardens. She suffered a perforated ear drum.
Defence counsel Frances Connor said White was “ashamed he had hit a woman” and was upset that one punch had caused so much damage – but that he had been repaying a debt after damaging the car of a drug dealer in Manchester.
The court also heard that Mr McAllister was attacked after witnessing an exchange on Stafford Street between the occupants of a white car and a cyclist.
When the car drove off and then returned, Mr McAllister felt something was not right and began walking away.
But Yearwood got out of the car with a knife followed by White who was armed with a bat. The victim turned away but was stabbed in the buttock and White hit him on the head and elbow with the bat, which broke.
White was jailed for a total of six years, while 20-year-old Yearwood was locked up for two years and three months.
