A Highland League boss has been found guilty of a road rage attack – which resulted in him wrapping a seatbelt around his victim’s neck.
Cove Rangers’ assistant manager Graeme Mathieson was driving along St Machar Drive in Aberdeen when his van was hit by a school minibus.
Driver Thomas Kirk – a former army veteran – stopped and tried to get Mathieson’s insurance details. But he told Aberdeen Sheriff Court that the 53-year-old joiner started being verbally abusive, so he got back into the minibus and started writing down the registration number of the van.
Mathieson then climbed into the minibus behind him, and wrapped a seatbelt round his neck from behind, shouting: “You were in the wrong lane.”
Mathieson was found guilty of assaulting Mr Kirk and failing to provide his details, after a trial at the city’s sheriff court. But last night, he maintained his innocence and described the assault charge “as a joke”.
During the trial, the court heard Mr Kirk had been on the phone to his boss when Mathieson sprung up behind him.
He swung out an elbow which caused his attacker to lose his balance.
He said that before he had returned to his minibus to call his boss, he had tried to speak to Mathieson. He told the court: “He gave me that much verbal abuse. I served in the Army for 17 years in Northern Ireland and apart from one other incident it was the worst I have heard. It was helpless trying to reason with the man.” But Mathieson, of Dunlin Road in Cove Bay, told the court the minibus driver did not get out to ask for his details following the accident on St Machar Drive on September 29 last year.
He said he had then continued on to St Machar Road, towards BSP Timber Ltd, where Mr Kirk appeared, got out his bus and wrote down the van’s details.
He told the court he had gone up to the minibus, offered to speak to Mr Kirk’s boss on the phone about the incident and insisted he had not got into the vehicle.
However, Sheriff Morag McLaughlin found Mathieson guilty of assault and failing to provide his details. He was given eight penalty points, and fined £850.
Last night, Mathieson said: “Someone hit my van and drove off and I am being punished for it. I have been charged with something I did not do and I am not happy.”