A sleeping Stonehaven family of four was woken in the middle of the night by the sound of a drunken stranger snoring in their living room.
Marian Byalov had become stranded in the Aberdeenshire town after being thrown off a bus to Edinburgh because he was so drunk.
But instead of getting a hotel for the night, the 49-year-old wandered uninvited into the family’s unlocked home while they were asleep upstairs.
When his snoring woke them up and he was challenged over being there, Byalov bizarrely showed his passport to the family and claimed they didn’t want to help him.
The alarming episode happened just after 3am on December 5 last year at an address on Dunnottar Avenue, Fiscal depute Andrew McMann told Aberdeen Sheriff Court.
Stonehaven family alarmed by uninvited stranger Marian Byalov’s snoring that sounded like ‘groaning’
The parents, who share the house with two teenage children, woke to “the groaning of a male downstairs”.
Mr McMann explained: “Both went to investigate out of concern for themselves and the children and found the accused in the lounge area standing at the bottom of the stairs”.
Asked if he was alright, Byalov, oddly, took out his passport, presented it to the couple and said: “You don’t want to help me”.
The police were then called to the property to deal with the unwanted visitor.
Byalov, of Beaufort Hotel, Inverness, pled guilty to behaving in a threatening or abusive manner.
Defence agent Mike Monro described his client’s behaviour as “utterly bizarre”.
He said his client, a Bulgarian national, had been working at a hotel in Inverness and took the train to Aberdeen during a couple of days off.
“He consumed a vast amount of alcohol. Then he got it into his head to go to Edinburgh, never having been there before,” Mr Monro explained.
Byalov then decided to hop onboard a bus from Aberdeen to the Scottish capital.
Inverness hotel worker fined hundreds for drunkenly wandering into Stonehaven family’s home
Mr Monro added: “However, so drunk was he that the driver elected to remove the accused at Stonehaven. We’ve now got the accused, very drunk, wandering around Stonehaven.
“The accused, for reasons he can’t comprehend, in his drunken state, was looking for somewhere to stay for the night and ended up going around the back garden of this address, knocking ornaments and plant pots over.
“The door was insecure and in he went.”
Mr Monro acknowledged that the couple and their children would have been frightened during the incident, and explained that the “groaning” they heard was Byalov’s snoring.
He told the court that his client woke up and was “meandering around the ground floor of the property” when the couple discovered him.
“The male householder approached him and he just hands over his passport and said, ‘You don’t want to help me’.
“He apologises to the householders for the fear and alarm he caused them,” the lawyer concluded.
Sheriff Margaret Hodge told Byalov: “It must have been very frightening for the householders that you entered their house in the middle of the night.”
The court case ended with the sheriff fining him £290.
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