A north teenager who forced the evacuation of 32 flats when he posted a picture of a hoax bomb on social media is appealing his 16-month jail sentence for the offence.
Jack Salter built the device in Fort William and caused panic among his neighbours when he uploaded a picture of the authentic-looking device online.
He admitted behaving in a threatening manner by exhibiting a device that looked like a bomb and was sentenced at Inverness Sheriff Court in June.
But the 18-year-old is now on Thursday’s appeal court list in Edinburgh.
Salter’s solicitor had argued previously that his client was suffering from “acute grief reaction” following the death of his father a few weeks before the incident.
Sheriff Margaret Neilson said at the time that although she accepted it was a “difficult stage” in his life, the charge was of “such gravity” that no disposal other than a custodial one was appropriate.
Fiscal Roderick Urquhart showed the sheriff Salter’s Facebook page with an image of the bomb he had made – constructed from two gas cylinders, a golf club, a scarf and a deodorant canister.
Police and firefighters were called to the scene inside Salter’s previous residence at Upper Achintore, on June 19 last year before the Army’s ordnance disposal experts were scrambled from their Edinburgh base.
This left a lesser-equipped standby truck to cover the whole of Scotland for a period of eight hours.
Salter also admitted three road traffic offences which happened five days earlier.
Mr Urquhart told Inverness Sheriff Court that at about 8.20pm on June 19, police officers attended Salter’s flat in connection with an unrelated offence before he invited them in to look in his living room.
When they entered they saw the device placed on top of the coffee table.
Police took Salter away and firefighters carried out a brief assessment of the apparent bomb and formed the opinion that the items “could be a viable device”.
Army Ordnance experts later established that the assembly was not a viable explosive device – but that the set up of it created a visual effect such that it would appear viable to the untrained eye.
