News / Man admits spitting at paramedic and police
A THIRTY two year old man from County Durham has admitted drunkenly spitting at an ambulance paramedic and a police officer and subjecting nurses at the Gilbert Bain Hospital to a “non-stop tirade of filth and abuse”.
Stephen Whitehead, of Moffatt Road, Owton Manor, Hartlepool, pleaded guilty to assaulting, obstructing or hindering an ambulance paramedic and assaulting a police officer by spitting at and striking her on the body.
Both incidents took place at Lerwick’s South Road in the early hours of Friday.
He also admitted breaching the peace at the Gilbert Bain Hospital by shouting, swearing and uttering threats.
Procurator fiscal Duncan Mackenzie said Whitehead first came to the police’s attention at around 3.30am on Friday after staff at the Lerwick Hotel found him lying beside a fire exit “very drunk indeed”.
He had urinated over himself and was mumbling incoherently, and police called an ambulance.
By the time it arrived Whitehead had come round from his “drunken stupor” and his behaviour “deteriorated quite dramatically”. He spat at and narrowly missed a female paramedic, before spitting at a policewoman before officers had time to fit a spit hood over his head.
Despite being subjected to a tirade of abuse, Mackenzie said, police and paramedics carried out their responsibility to him in a professional manner.
Whitehead’s poor behaviour continued in hospital where he threatened to throw a bottle filled with his own urine over a nurse.
The fiscal said that an A&E department would invariably contain people there in a “very dire situation” and “the last thing they should have to contend with is disgusting behaviour like that”.
Defence agent Richard Donaldson said his client had no recollection of the events, but was “absolutely disgusted” by his own actions.
Whitehead, who is in Shetland working as a contractor for a small local construction firm, had gone out drinking with colleagues after work on Thursday.
Donaldson said his client, who had spent three nights in custody, did not drink very often due to a bowel condition, and had become so drunk because he simply wasn’t used to alcohol.
He said there was a likelihood that Whitehead would lose his job – something disputed by the fiscal, resulting in Sheriff Philip Mann calling for reports prior to passing sentence.
Sheriff Mann said they were “serious charges” that could not be tolerated or condoned.
He granted bail prior to sentencing on 8 June, warning Whitehead that all options would be considered.
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