A Scottish man sparked a large scale evacuation of an Edinburgh shopping centre after phoning police and claiming he had planted a nail bomb.
Robert Kirk warned emergency staff the device was hidden inside the city’s busy Cameron Toll shopping complex and would go off within 30 minutes.
The lout told the 999 operator during the call he had assembled the explosive after buying the parts using “cryptocurrency on the dark web”.
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Bomb Squad officers cleared the area after racing to the shopping centre and after locating the bag discovered it only contained gym equipment belonging to the 27-year-old.
Kirk, who had been at the gym within Cameron Toll with a friend earlier that day, was found waiting at the scene and was arrested following the incident in April last year.
Kirk pleaded guilty to conducting himself in a disorderly manner by telling emergency services he had planted a bomb and causing the evacuation when he appeared at Edinburgh Sheriff Court last month.
He returned to the dock at the city court for sentencing on Tuesday where he was handed a community payback order as an alternative to a custodial sentence.
The court was told Kirk, a former serviceman, had deliberately made the fake bomb call to the emergency services as he was “genuinely in fear of his life”.
No other details of the situation were aired in court but Sheriff Alistair Noble was handed a police report that explained the reasons behind his conduct.
Sheriff Noble ordered Kirk to carry out 300 hours of unpaid work and said he will be supervised by his local authority’s social work department for the next 12 months.
Lawyer Charles Morrison, defending, said the social work report was “positive in its terms” and handed the sheriff a glowing reference from Kirk’s current employers in Wales.
The solicitor added his client had since moved to Caerphilly in Wales to make a new life for himself following the hoax bomb incident.
Previously the court was told Kirk had gone to the shopping centre’s gym with pal Jamie Scott at around 3pm on April 10 last year.
Fiscal depute Connor Muir said Kirk was described by his friend as being “slightly agitated” and had made a comment that “something would happen” if he left the building following his workout.
The court heard Kirk remained within the shopping complex for several hours and had called 999 to report the bomb threat at around 7.45pm.
Kirk told the operator he had left a homemade explosive device within a bag near a bench opposite the centre’s Sainsbury’s supermarket.
The fiscal said Kirk informed the call handler “the device was going to go off in 30 minutes” and that he was waiting about 50 metres away.
Mr Muir added: “He made comments that he was the ‘enemy of all mankind’.”
Police arrived within minutes and found Kirk nearby who told them he was “intent on destruction” and that the bag contained a nail bomb.
Police evacuated the complex and officers with experience in dealing with explosives also arrived on the scene.
Kirk was quizzed about the bomb and the bag was soon found to only be holding gym gear belonging to the offender.
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