A man has been jailed for seven years after being found guilty of stabbing another man in the back four times in an Aberdeen car park.
Anthony Higgins was convicted by a jury at the High Court in Aberdeen over an attack that left the victim with a punctured lung.
Higgins had originally been on trial accused of attempted murder, but was convicted of the lesser charge of assault to severe injury, permanent disfigurement and to the danger of his life.
The 34-year-old knifed Darren Carr during a struggle which also involved Mr Carr’s best friend Kieran Reid, in the NCP car park on Shiprow, Aberdeen, on September 12 2017.
Mr Carr had been with his partner Sarah Algie at the time, who had been set to be a witness against Higgins in separate proceedings at Aberdeen Sheriff Court earlier that day.
Higgins had denied the charge and lodged special defences which claimed Mr Reid had stabbed Mr Carr by mistake.
Sentencing Higgins, Lord Uist said: “In order to commit this assault, which followed upon criminal proceedings against you in the sheriff court in which his partner was to have been a witness against you, you must have been in possession of a knife at the time.
“You inflicted four stab wounds on his back, requiring him to be treated in hospital for a collapsed lung and thereafter readmitted twice because of subsequent complications.
“The assault has had a profound impact on your victim.
“You have a lengthy criminal record dating from 2002, mainly for road traffic offences, but in November 2007 you were sentenced to eight years three months’ imprisonment for being concerned in the supplying of a controlled drug, and in March 2016 you were sentenced in the sheriff court in Aberdeen to a community payback order of 80 hours unpaid work for assault to injury.
“You have never held any long-term employment. Violence of the type in which you engaged on September 12 last year cannot be tolerated.
“I must take account of the aggravations of the assault contained in the verdict of the jury and the effects of it on your victim.”
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Defence counsel Matt Jackson told the court: “There is, and has been for some time, an ongoing feud between himself and the Algie family.”
Higgins had also been accused of assaulting Mr Reid by punching him in the face and of possession of a knife. However, the jury returned not guilty verdicts in relation to those charges and Higgins, of Worsley Crescent, Liverpool, was formally acquitted.
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