A man who took the knife used to cut the cake from a wedding narrowly avoided jail yesterday.
Kevin Alexander appeared for sentence at Wick Sheriff Court yesterday.
But the motive behind his strange actions, which baffled a sheriff, remained unclear.
The knife incident occurred when Alexander, 56, attended at wedding at the Weigh Inn Hotel in Thurso on August 28.
After removing the knife, he walked through the town with it to his home at Castle Street.
The court was told that Alexander had no authority to remove the knife, which is normally kept in a black sheath.
His solicitor, Fiona MacDonald, told the court, previously, that the accused had become concerned about the knife “lying about on the table” and put it in his pocket.
The knife was subsequently found in the police van which had taken Alexander to the police station.
Sheriff Andrew Berry said: “The circumstances of what I am dealing with are unusual and, in many ways, deeply worrying. It is quite clear that over a period of 40 years you have held down very good employment. The circumstances would appear to be that you were at a wedding in the Weigh Inn. An item of cutlery is taken by you with a view to returning it, when you should simply have left it where it was. It is described by you as a Skean Dhu and you refer to people at the wedding wearing Highland dress.”
Sheriff Berry said he was “persuaded by the thinnest of margins” not to send Alexander to prison. He said that he had taken into account the consequences for Alexander’s employment but commented that this was something the accused would have brought that upon himself”.
Alexander, who admitted being in possession of the knife at the Weigh Inn and various other places, was ordered to carry out 225 hours of unpaid work in the community.
