A man who assaulted his girlfriend and her 79-year-old mother has been warned he may face jail.
Ian Docherty launched an attack on his partner after an argument at her mother’s Alness home.
But when the elderly woman attempted to intervene he sent her “flying” across the room with a push.
Docherty, 44, appeared from custody at Tain Sheriff Court to admit charges of assault and assault to injury against the mother and daughter respectively.
He also pled guilty to a charge of threatening or abusive behaviour, which was racially aggravated and aggravated by prejudice relating to sexual orientation, towards police officers who detained him following the incident.
Fiscal depute Naomi Duffy-Welsh told the court that Docherty and his partner had been living at her 79-year-old mother’s address in Westford, Alness, on December 5 of last year.
She said the mother was watching television in her bedroom at around 2am when she heard the pair arguing in the room next door.
An hour and a half later Docherty’s partner told him to “shut up” because they were in her mother’s house.
The fiscal depute said Docherty had then “gone mental” and had grabbed the woman by her hair and hit her head against the headboard of the bed, before grabbing her throat and squeezing it.
Mother intervened after daughter’s screams
“The mother has then overheard a loud bang and crash,” Ms Duffy-Welsh said, adding that it was followed by the sound of her daughter “screaming”.
This prompted the older woman to go into the other room, where she saw her daughter on the bed with the accused leaning over her and punching her in the head.
“The mother then grabbed the accused by the t-shirt and made attempts to pull him away,” the fiscal depute explained.
As a result, Docherty fell backwards, pulling his partner onto the floor in the process.
Push sent pensioner ‘flying’
“The accused has then turned and has pushed the mother across the bed, and she has gone flying and ended on a pouffe by the bed,” she said.
When his partner tried calling for help on her mobile phone Docherty took it from her. She ran into the living room to use a landline, which was also snatched from her.
Docherty left the house before police arrived. Officers at the scene noted that the woman had bruising to her hand and forearm and red marks on her face and neck.
When Docherty returned around 4am he was arrested and taken to Burnett Road Police Station.
During the journey he made a number of threats and comments to officers, calling them names including “p***s”, “p****s”, “bams”, “nonce” and “s*******s”.
He told the officers: “Eat my s****” and said: “Have you ever been battered before boys? You are getting battered.”
The fiscal depute said Docherty’s former partner, who had attended court expecting to give evidence before the plea was tendered, was supportive of the imposition of a non-harassment order preventing him from contacting her.
Solicitor Graham Mann, for Docherty, told the court: “Mental health and alcohol has been really at the root of the offending” and added: “He recognises that the relationship is over.”
Deferring sentence for the production of reports, Sheriff Neil Wilson told Docherty, of Firhill, Alness: “A custodial sentence will be very much at the forefront of mind.”
He remanded him until the next calling of the case at the end of this month.
