A 16-year-old Keith boy has been told he is in “serious trouble” after he fractured a drunk man’s skull in a hammer attack.
The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pulled the weapon out of his rucksack and struck the 54-year-old twice on the head during the afternoon assault in Buckie.
The youngster appeared at Inverness Sheriff Court and admitted assaulting the man to his severe injury and danger of his life.
He also pleaded guilty to having a knife in a public place without reasonable excuse.
Eyewitnesses said the pavement was left covered in blood after the incident on the afternoon of April 1 last year.
Fiscal depute Naomi Duffy-Welsh told the court that the boy and his victim were at a cash machine near a bus stop on East Church Street “when, for an unknown reason, words were exchanged”.
She said: “Both became aggressive, they exchanged punches. The accused pulled the hammer out of his rucksack and struck the man twice, causing him to fall to the pavement.
“The accused walked away and the complainer got up in an aggressive manner but was held back by witnesses.
“He had a fractured skull, a one-inch laceration to his head and bruising to his brain.”
‘If I wanted to kill him I would have kept going’
The rucksack was later abandoned and when found by police who had been alerted to the assault, it also had a knife in it.
As he was being arrested, the boy told police: “What do you think? The guy came towards me, he had something wrong with him. I pulled it out (the hammer) and hit him.
“If I wanted to kill him I would have kept going. I was scared. He was still moving when I left.”
Deferring sentence until February 25 for a background report and a restriction of liberty order assessment, Sheriff Elidh Macdonald told him: “You are a young man and you are in serious trouble.”
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