A stalker walked past his elderly neighbour’s house and gave her the middle finger on a daily basis for months.
Pensioner Yan Murray targeted his female neighbour, who is in her 70s, with a campaign of harassment over the course 14 months between July 2019 and September 2020.
The 67-year-old, whose behaviour was described by his own solicitor as “bizarre”, walked past her home on Thorngrove Avenue in Aberdeen on a daily basis making the offensive gesture.
He also threatened the woman and branded her a fraud after seeing her without her mobility aid.
Fiscal depute Rebecca Thomson told Aberdeen Sheriff Court: “At some point during the summer of 2019, the complainer was working at her desk and noticed the accused walk past her window.
‘Stop staring at me or I’ll rip your face off’
“She looked up and noticed him sticking his middle finger up towards her.
“Over the rest of 2019 the accused would continually stick his middle finger up to the woman any time he saw her at her laptop.
“This would happen on a daily basis – sometimes twice a day.”
On one occasion she saw Murray at a bus stop on Great Western Road. He approached her and told her to “stop looking at him”.
When the woman said she wasn’t looking at him, Murray responded by “using colourful language to tell her off”.
In another incident, Murray ranted at his neighbour: “Stop staring at me or I’ll rip your face off.”
He also warned: “Stop telling people about me or I’ll come for you.”
When the woman tried to walk away, Murray “continued to swear at her and call her a fraud because he’d seen her not using her mobility aid”.
The court heard on one occasion the woman spotted Murray walking past her kitchen window sticking up both middle fingers “for the whole time she could see him as he walked down the street”.
Another time, Murray saw the woman on Great Western Road and spat into the road, saying: “That’s what I think of you being here.”
‘I find your course of behaviour very bizarre’
On June 18 2020, the woman was walking on Seafield Road with a friend when Murray spotted them and again raised his middle finger.
This time, the women responded with a similar gesture, but Murray “took umbrage” and began shouting, swearing and making threats.
Murray, of Thorngrove Avenue, Aberdeen, pled guilty to charges of stalking and behaving in a threatening or abusive manner.
Defence agent John McLeod described the offences as “bizarre behaviour”.
He added: “I’m not aware of any mental or organic basis for his behaviour or perceptions, which clearly are somewhat skewed.
“He feels he would benefit from a period of supervision.”
Sheriff Margaret Hodge told Murray: “I find your course of behaviour very bizarre and it must have been distressing for your neighbour to be the subject of abuse and insults.”
She ordered him to be supervised for six months.
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