Court / Jail term for unprovoked assaults in restaurant

Lerwick Sheriff Court

Lerwick Sheriff Court

A MAN has been imprisoned for 20 months for a violent attack that involved four victims at Lerwick’s Great Wall Chinese restaurant in October.

Dale Henry, 37, described as a prisoner at HMP Grampian, earlier admitted the assaults that left one man needing stitches to a head wound and suffering “psychological harm”.

Henry, who appeared from custody at Lerwick Sheriff Court on Thursday, had carried out the attack after seeing his partner embrace one of the individuals.

The incident had deeply distressed customers, some of whom had gathered for a fund raiser on behalf of those affected.

Defence agent Gregor Kelly said that Henry, who has a history of assaults, had turned over a new leaf but had reacted badly after drinking wine, to what he saw was a sexual advance on his partner.

Procurator fiscal Duncan MacKenzie rejected this as an attempt to shift the blame to the victim.

Henry was jailed for more than four years for a serious assault in 2011.

Passing sentence, Sheriff Ian Cruickshank said it had been “an inexcusable and frightening display of rage at a social event.”

He added: “As far as I am concerned it was totally unprovoked and has had a profound and lasting impact” on the principal victim who would have been more seriously injured without the intervention of the other complainants.

He sentenced Henry to 20 months in jail to run concurrent with three other sentences of six months, and backdated to 15 October when Henry was taken into custody.