A 42-year-old man was outraged when he was jailed last week for causing trouble at Perth Royal Infirmary.
Robert Garrick sought help from medical staff at the hospital’s accident and emergency department after being assaulted last year but ended up lashing out at them after he was asked to stop swearing.
Fiscal depute Elizabeth Hodgson told Perth Sheriff Court last Wednesday Garrick started being “disruptive” as nurses attempted to treat a head injury inflicted on him during the assault and they asked him to move to a waiting area.
She said he then started pacing around the waiting area and muttering statements like ‘no-one gives a f***’ then grew even more agitated when the nurses asked him back so they could begin further treatment.
Ms Hodgson said Garrick began shouting and swearing and when he was asked to tone down his language he ripped off a blood soaked dressing and threw it at a nurse, covering her in his blood.
Garrick, of Glengarry Road, Perth, admitted assaulting, obstructing or hindering a named nurse by throwing the blood soaked bandage at her on September 8 last year.
Speaking for Garrick solicitor Linda Clark told sheriff Gillian Wade he had a “long history” of mental health issues and was prone to getting himself into trouble at times when he either stopped taking medication or needed different drugs.
She added the PRI incident came about as a result of Garrick being assaulted earlier in the day and having a part of his nose “bitten off” during the attack.
Ms Clark suggested he be dealt with by way of a community payback order but sheriff Wade noted a report put before her by social workers said he was unsuitable to carry out unpaid work.
The sheriff said it seemed to her Ms Clark was suggesting she “ignore” the findings of the authors of the report and she could not do that.
“I have to be satisfied that there is an alternative to custody and this report does not give me that comfort, I’m afraid,” she told Ms Clark.
Sheriff Wade opted to sentence Garrick to serve four months in prison after concluding no other sentencing options were available to her.
Upon hearing his sentence Garrick started raving as he stood in the dock, sarcastically ‘thanking’ the sheriff repeatedly for deciding to jail him and telling her his sentence would only to add to his existing mental health problems.
As he was led out of the courtroom by prison officers he was overheard telling them he thought sheriff Wade was “bang out of order”.
