A footballer who left a 14-year-old girl in a coma after slipping her super-strength ecstasy in a kiss avoided jail yesterday.
Stefan MacRitchie, 20, was instead ordered to complete 200 hours of community work and must remain under the supervision of a social worker for 18 months.
Earlier this month, the mother of the girl involved told how the incident had left her daughter ‘”like a scene from the exorcist”.
She told the Daily Record: “My daughter was throwing herself off the bed, banging her head off it, crawling on the floor.
“It was like something out of the horror movie The Exorcist. She was black and blue.
“We were holding her, trying to keep her safe, but she was hallucinating, thinking things were coming out of the walls to get her.
“I was trying to comfort her but she was lashing out, although every now and then she’d come out of it and say ‘Mum, mum, help me, help me, stop this, stop this.
“Her face was so swollen, she looked as if she’d been in a car crash.”
Doctors were forced to put the teen into an induced coma, and her mum says she was given just a 50/50 chance of survival after her brain began showing signs of swelling.
Strathspey Thistle player MacRitchie admitted supplying the super-strength ‘Nintendo’ tablet to the girl.
Fiscal depute Michelle Molley told the Inverness Sheriff Court that the incident happened at the home address of a friend of the victim.
The fiscal said that “many teenagers” had met to see in the New Year on December 31, 2013.
The adult householders were present but the majority of the people inside the property were under 18 and knew each other from school.
Ms Molley said that alcohol was openly drunk by the teenagers attending the party.
The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, arrived at about 8pm with a friend and was drinking alcohol she had obtained earlier in the evening.
Ms Molley told the court: “In the early hours of January 1, 2014 she and the accused met and began kissing.
“During the kiss the accused passed one item from inside his mouth into her mouth.
“The complainer swallowed the item.
“The complainer asked the accused what he had put into her mouth and he replied ‘eccies’ which she perceived to be the controlled drug commonly known as ecstasy.
“She terminated the contact and immediately proceeded to the toilet concerned at what she had ingested.”
MacRitchie left the party shortly after the incident.
Yesterday, Sheriff Gordon Fleetwood was told by Mike Chapman, defending, that analysis showed the teenager had also consumed amphetamine, meth-amphetamine and an antidepressant.
Chapman said: “This was an impulsive offence carried out while he was under the influence of alcohol and ecstasy at the time.
“He accepts responsibility and does not place blame on the victim.
“He did not mean to cause her harm and no longer abuses illegal substances.”
Sheriff Fleetwood said: “This is an offence which could attract a custodial sentence but I can deal with it by a community based disposal because there is an alternative open to me.”
MacRitchie recently signed for Strathspey Thistle, having previously played for Fort William in the Highland League.
He has also been on the books at Clachnacuddin.
