Mum devastated by daughter's sentence
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THE heartbroken mother of an Elgin teenager jailed for two years and two months for a drunken threat to firebomb a sheriff’s home, has hit out at the severity of the sentence.
Eileen Stewart admitted her family had been devastated by the prison term handed to daughter Stephanie (19), and they are appealing the sentence to the high court.
A tearful Mrs Stewart criticised a justice system that jailed her daughter for so long for "an empty threat" for which the teenager had expressed remorse.
And yet men involved in an incident of violent disorder just yards from her home, which ultimately resulted in the knife murder of a man, received far shorter sentences. "Where’s the justice in that?" she asked.
"There’s no way she deserved that sentence when other people run about this town selling drugs, battering people and fighting, and they get smaller sentences."
Father-of-six Stephen Johnston was stabbed in June, 2010 following a street gang fight involving around 20 men on Lesmurdie Road.
Mr Johnston, from Lossiemouth, lay fatally wounded on the ground just yards from Mrs Stewart’s Logan Court home.
While his killer Jamie Nicol was jailed for 18 years, two other men involved in the disturbance, who admitted breaking the peace, shouting and swearing, challenging others to fight and brandishing weapons, were sentenced to nine months and six months by the high court.
Two other men involved in a serious assault in Blackburn, Aberdeenshire, which was linked to the Elgin incident, were jailed for 3½ years and eight months.
"My little boy is 10 years old and still can’t sleep in his own bed because he is so terrified at night. This has left a lot of my neighbours, many who are elderly, shook up and scarred for life."
For the full story, see this week's 'Northern Scot'
