The mother of a man who was allegedly attacked and disfigured in his Fraserburgh home described the scene after the incident as a “bloodbath”.
Thomas Chesterton, 21, and Aaron Rennie, 27, went on trial at Peterhead Sheriff Court yesterday accused of assaulting Douglas McCulloch with a blade and disfiguring him.
Rennie is also charged with assaulting Mr McCulloch’s brother Andrew Johnstone. The pair deny the charges.
Appearing as the Crown’s first witness, Karen Johnstone told the court she was staying with a friend on the evening of June 4 this year when she received a worried phone call from her eldest son, Alistair McCulloch, at around 11pm.
Mrs Johnstone, 51, described to the jury the chaos she found at the family home, saying: “It was like a bloodbath when I went into the house. It was full of police and my three sons were there.
“The door leads straight into the sitting room and the whole room was covered in blood.
When asked by fiscal David Bernard what she saw, Mrs Johnstone said: “Douglas was covered in blood. His face was cut, his hand was cut. It was down the side of his face from his ear to his lip.
“There was an ambulance sitting outside when I went to the door and Alistair and Andrew were in shock as well.”
Chesterton’s defence agent, advocate Claire Mitchell, did not cross-examine Mrs Johnstone but advocate Jonathan Crow, representing Rennie, asked how much alcohol had been in the house that night.
The court was shown photographs of the family’s Buchan Road home from June 4. On the coffee table were two bottles of Buckfast Tonic Wine, a two-litre bottle of cider and a bottle of lager.
On the stove in the kitchen there was a box of lager, although Mr Crow conceded there was no way of knowing how many bottles were left inside.
Mr Crow asked Mrs Johnstone why her badly-wounded son had been hesitant to go in the ambulance.
She responded: “He just didn’t want to go to the hospital. He had a good drink in him and didn’t want to go.”
The trial continues today.