An angry pensioner who smashed a woman’s windows with a hammer had targeted the wrong property, a court has heard.
Catherine Livingstone, 72, terrified the resident of the flat on Formartine Road in Aberdeen when she turned up shouting an unknown woman’s name.
To the homeowner’s horror, Livingstone then pulled out a hammer and started striking her living room window with it.
Livingstone, who uses a walking stick, then moved to the kitchen window, which she shattered with even harder hammer blows.
Her solicitor told Aberdeen Sheriff Court that his client’s conduct was “unacceptable” but that she had gone to the “wrong address” that day.
Fiscal depute Ryan Diamond told the court that at around 4.15pm on September 4 last year, the woman who resided at the Formartine Road address was in her bedroom when her buzzer sounded.
“She heard a female voice shouting for ‘Julie’,” he said.
“A short time later while within her living room, the complainer observed the accused holding a hammer, which she then used to strike a window a number of times, causing it to crack.
“The woman then heard the sound of her kitchen window smashing and the accused was lost from view at that point.”
The police were called and they traced Livingstone and the hammer was found.
Livingstone admitted one charge of wilfully and recklessly destroying property with a hammer.
She also admitted an additional charge of being in possession of an offensive weapon.
An ‘implausible account’
Defence agent Neil McRobert described his client’s actions as “unacceptable conduct”.
“She vandalised an address and it was the wrong address,” he said.
“The explanation with regard to the offence is quite confusing – what I took from it is that she intended to go to someone else’s address.”
Telling Mr McRobert that he found the explanation “implausible”, Sheriff Ian Wallace fined Livingstone, of Rosehill Avenue, Aberdeen, a total of £395.
He also made her subject to a community payback order with supervision for 12 months.
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