Drunk man in threat to torch neighbours’ home

Aman who threatened to burn his neighbours’ house down with a Molotov cocktail has been jailed.

Jody Bruce went to the next-door property and knocked on the window demanding the man come out and talk.

When he refused, Bruce told the couple living there he was “going to burn the house down”, saying he had a “petrol bomb” which he attempted to light.

Bruce, 46, appeared from custody at Inverness Sheriff Court to admit a single charge of threatening or abusive behaviour towards the couple on July 25 last year.

Fiscal depute Pauline Gair told the court it was the early hours when police were first called to

Anderson Drive in Buckie where both Bruce and his victims lived.

Following an incident, which was not explained to the court, an officer attended at the scene and noted Bruce appeared “confrontational and angry”.

Such was his presentation that more police officers were called. When they spoke to him they noted him to be drunk and still drinking, but co-operative.

But only minutes had passed after police left the scene at 3.40am when Bruce “appeared outside the living-room window” of the neighbouring home and knocked on the glass.

“The witness looked up, seeing the accused who shouted at him to come out and talk to him, but he refused,” Mrs Gair said.

“He told (the witness) that if he didn’t go out and talk to him he was going to burn the house down.”

The court heard the couple then noticed Bruce was holding “what they described as a bottle with thin brown-coloured rope and what looks like a grey sock in his hand”.

“At this point, the accused stated he had a petrol bomb and started to try and light the rope,” the fiscal depute said, adding that he only succeeded in burning his thumb.

One of the witnesses asked Bruce why he was doing it, while the other captured the scene on her mobile phone.

Bruce then told the couple “it wasn’t over” and said he was “going to get more petrol”.

Police were called and the mobile phone footage helped to identify Bruce.

“The witnesses were visibly shaken and terrified by the accused’s actions and could not understand why he was targeting them,” Mrs Gair told Sheriff Ian Cruickshank.

Officers went to Bruce’s address where they found him to be “hostile” and a bottle with a rope and cloth was found near the door.

Bruce was arrested and subsequent testing revealed the bottle to contain a mix of ethanol and white spirit.

Solicitor Grant Daglish, for Bruce, told the court his client “has no memory of this incident whatsoever”.

He explained that Bruce had been medicated after coming out of a postsurgical coma and that he was an alcoholic.

Sheriff Cruickshank told Bruce: “You claim you have no recollection of the incident and you have no explanation to provide as to why you decided to terrorise neighbours not known to you.”

Noting Bruce had already spent the equivalent of six months on remand, Sheriff Cruickshank jailed him for 26 months.

Jody Bruce.