A former police officer who verbally abused his Inverness neighbour and threatened to shoot her brother has been ordered to complete unpaid work in the community.
Donald Bain called the woman a “c***” and “w****” prompting her to call her brother to her home.
But when the man tried to speak to Bain, the pensioner made the shooting threats, before coming out of his house with a knife in his hand.
The 72-year-old appeared at Inverness Sheriff Court for sentencing having been previously found guilty at trial of threatening or abusive behaviour in relation to the incident on August 5 of last year.
The charge detailed how Bain shouted, swore and acted in an aggressive manner as well as uttering threats whilst brandishing a knife.
In evidence led by fiscal depute Naomi Duffy-Welsh, Bain’s 57-year-old neighbour Kathleen MacKinnon said she was at home when she heard “the shouting start from next door”.
She said: “I phoned my brother because I was scared. He was calling me a c*** and a w****. He was shouting out of the back door as well.”
Abuse left neighbour ‘upset’
When Ms MacKinnon’s brother Ewan, 54, arrived at her home with his two sons he could hear “noise coming through the wall” of the semi-detached property and noted that his sister was “very upset.”
Mr MacKinnon then approached the rear of Bain’s property hoping to discuss matters.
He said the older man had a “look of venom” on his face as he began “shouting and swearing” telling the concerned sibling: “Look at you, you’re nothing but a c***.”
The witness explained that Bain had called him that name “several times” after which he pointed at him though the window and “threatened to shoot me”.
The man retreated inside his sister’s home, but later spotted Bain at the front of the property, walking towards his pickup truck with a knife.
“It looked like he was going towards it to slash the tyres,” Mr MacKinnon told the court.
The MacKinnons confronted Bain and called the police.
Man ‘feared’ for family’s safety
Mr MacKinnon said: “He had the knife by his side, up and down, he was pointing it to us. I was feeling threatened and I feared for the safety of my family.”
Ms MacKinnon said Bain was “flicking the knife back and forth” and said that the incident left her “shocked”.
She said: “What was he doing with a knife in my garden?
When police arrived outside the properties, Bain was “ranting and raving” and appeared “agitated and aggressive”.
Officers found a knife on stairs outside Bain’s home.
Taking to the witness box in his own defence during the trial Bain said that he was a former police officer with Fife Constabulary.
He denied playing loud music or shouting threats and unpleasantries and claimed the knife found on his doorstep was “deliberately planted”
But Sheriff David Harvie told Bain this was “nothing more than […] a story” and found Bain guilty, noting that it was “quite a serious incident”.
At the sentencing hearing, he handed down a community payback order requiring the former officer to carry out 120 hours of unpaid work in the community and remain under supervision for six months.
Sheriff Harvie also imposed a non-harassment order preventing Bain from having any contact with the woman for a year.
