News / Knife attacker assessed as low risk
A LERWICK man who held a woman at knifepoint for more than three hours while he threatened to rape and kill her escaped a jail sentence on Wednesday after social workers described him as “a low risk”.
Last month 41 year old Daniel Moore, of 24 Hoofields, pled guilty to the drunken assault on 20 February this year, which left the woman in a state of terror.
Defence agent Tommy Allan had suggested Moore had been previously diagnosed with a bipolar disorder and as well as being drunk he had stopped taking his medication at the time of the assault.
However a psychiatric report delivered to Lerwick Sheriff Court on Wednesday showed the mental disorder had not been confirmed and no psychological explanation could be given for the attack, which took place at the woman’s Lerwick home.
Mr Allan continued that Moore’s victim knew him well enough to know that he was unlikely to follow through with his threat to kill her by 11pm on the night in question.
He said: “I don’t seek to minimise the terror she must have felt that night…but she didn’t think he was going to do anything else. She had some understanding of the fact that this was erratic behaviour on his part, but not such that she was in fear of her life.”
Sheriff Graeme Napier noted that the social work report into Moore assessed him as having a low risk of reoffending. “I am reasonably reassured he is not a genuine danger to the public,” he said.
However he expressed concern that the accused failed to register the impact his actions would have on the victim, including running the blade of a six inch kitchen knife down the length of her body and cutting the buttons off the pyjamas she was wearing.
He also suggested Moore was something of “a fantasist”, describing himself as a former member of the parachute regiment when he had only had some experience of parachutes with the Territorial Army.
The sheriff told Moore that he had difficulty reconciling his need to send out a clear message about the consequences of such behaviour and the need to recognise the particular circumstances of this incident.
Placing him under a supervision order for 18 months and ordering him to carry out 140 hours of community work over the next nine months, Sheriff Napier said: “This was a horrendous offence. My first inclination was simply to send you to custody.”
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