A man who was “driven to breaking point” by his neighbour’s noisy music attacked her with a golf club, Tain Sheriff Court has heard.
Stuart Gray had “had enough” when he went to his downstairs neighbour’s door with the implement and struck her repeatedly.
Gray was not present at Inverness Sheriff Court when his solicitor entered a guilty plea to a charge of assault on his behalf.
The court heard it was on April 9 of last year that Mr Gray attacked the woman at an address in Mansefield Estate, Tain,
Fiscal depute Shay Treanor told Sheriff Neil Wilson: “The accused, who lived above and who had had enough, attended at [the complainer’s] door with a golf club and began to strike her repeatedly.”
‘No serious injury’
Mr Treanor said the attack left the woman with a “lump to her head” but no serious injury.
Following the assault, the fiscal depute told the court: “He admitted that he went ‘a bit doolally with the golf club and said that she had ‘pushed him to breaking point with all the noisy music’.”
Gray’s solicitor Rory Gowans told the court his client had lived at the address for significantly longer than his victim.
He said the 58-year-old divorced man was unemployed and had been suffering from anxiety and depression.
He said: “There had been constant noise – 24/7. There was always an entourage in and out of the house.
“He described it as ‘madness’. He wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t eating.
“He tried to get the council to intervene and was told it was a police matter. He asked police to intervene and they told him it was a council matter.
“On the day in question, he reached breaking point and he did what is libelled in the charge.”
Sheriff Wilson fined Gray £260 and ordered the forfeiture of the golf club.
