A youth who sparked a bomb alert prompting the evacuation of 32 flats had his jail sentence quashed by appeal judges today.
Jack Salter showed police officers who called at his home gas cylinders and other items tied together to appear to be an explosive device.
A firefighter who was called in came to the view that it could be a viable device and Army bomb disposal experts were drafted in from Edinburgh to attend at Salter’s home in Fort William in the Highlands.
The ordnance experts established it was not a viable explosive device but it would appear to be to the untrained eye because of its set up.
Salter, who was 17 at the time, told police: “Really all it would have taken is one spark and that would have gone boom.”
The discovery of the device prompted a major incident being declared and occupants of 32 flats were evacuated from their homes while the situation was dealt with.
The bomb disposal team were away from base for eight hours leaving only a less well-equipped standby vehicle to deal with any other incident in Scotland.photo of the cylinders in Salter’s flat had earlier been posted on the social media site Facebook.
Salter (18) of Lochaber Road, Fort William, earlier admitted behaving in a threatening or abusive manner by showing the apparent “bomb” to police resulting in the evacuation of neighbouring properties at Ross Place in the town in June 19 last year, when he appeared at Inverness Sheriff Court.
Sheriff Margaret Neilson sentenced him to 16 months detention for the offence after coming to the conclusion that only a significant custodial sentence was appropriate.
But lawyers acting for Salter challenged the imposition of the detention on the youth and judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh overturned it.
Lord Drummond Young, who heard the appeal with Lady Clark of Calton, said they were satisfied that there was an alternative to custody in his case.
Salter was placed under supervision on a three-year community payback order and was told to carry out 150 hours unpaid work.Drummond Young said it was clearly a serious incident. “The experience must have been very alarming for those in the neighbourhood.”
But the appeal judges said they considered that there were special circumstances in the case where Salter had suffered “an acute grief reaction” to the death of his father.
His father had died in “very distressing circumstances” from a drugs overdose in the presence of Salter shortly before the incident. Lord Drummond Young said it seemed that Salter’s reaction to his father’s death had caused a very difficult period for him when he committed a number of offences, but he had now settled down and had not been in trouble for some time.
Fred Mackintosh, counsel for Salter, told the court that the incident had been extremely disruptive and frightening but appeared to be largely out of character.
He said that following his liberation ahead of the appeal hearing he had been offered work and secured a college place.