A 55-year-old former circus worker was jailed for three-and-a-half years yesterday after a horror meat cleaver attack in the Highlands.
Campbell Leiper, 55, struck 39-year-old Angus Stewart on the neck with the weapon during a struggle outside his home in Easter Ross.
A judge told Leiper, who also used a garden fork in the attack, that although the victim sustained a deep laceration to his neck he was fortunate that there were no lasting injuries.
But Lady Scott told him at the High Court in Edinburgh: “You persisted in the attack using potentially lethal weapons.”
Leiper had originally faced a charge of attempted murder, but the Crown accepted his guilty plea to a reduced offence of assault to severe injury and permanent disfigurement.
He attacked Mr Stewart at Munro Crescent, in Kildary, near Invergordon, on March 23 this year by repeatedly punching him, striking his head off the ground, striking him with a garden fork on the legs, stamping on his legs and hitting him with the cleaver.
Lady Scott told Leiper that she would have jailed him for five years but for his early guilty plea.
She said: “This offence and all your offending is rooted in your chronic alcohol addiction. I very much hope you will use this sentence to address your addiction while in prison.”
She said she also took into account that, at the time of the offence, Leiper was struggling with the conduct of others who had taken over his house to use as a drinking den.
Unemployed Leiper, who left school to join the circus before becoming a scaffolder, has previous convictions for assault, disorder and knife possession.
The court heard that on the day before the attack the victim and his brother were at Leiper’s home along with another man.
They were all drinking but before the others left Leiper fell out with Mr Stewart’s brother.
The following night Mr Stewart turned up at Leiper’s home with a garden fork which he used to bang on the windows. One of the windows was smashed.
Leiper went to the back door and was shouting at him after picking up the cleaver.
The court was told that a neighbour saw them “going for each other”. Mr Stewart dropped the garden fork and both men ended up on the ground.
Leiper got on top of the other man and banged his head on the ground and struck him with the cleaver on the neck during the assault.
Mr Stewart was taken to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness with a wound running for 10 centimetres across the back of his neck.
Defence solicitor advocate Shahid Latif said Leiper had tried to self medicate by the use of alcohol to various degrees throughout his adult life.
