Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha.
A teenager who pleaded guilty to killing a bus driver by headbutting and then punching him was sentenced to four years and four months in custody. Fifteen years old at the time, he was part of a group of youths who were drinking heavily when he tried to board a bus but was prevented by driver Keith Rollinson, who said he was too drunk to travel. In response, the boy became upset, and upon leaving the bus, he pointed his phone at Rollinson’s face, leading the driver to grab the device. The altercation quickly turned physical, where the youngster repeatedly punched the 58-year-old driver until he collapsed in a bus station in Elgin’s St Giles Road district. Mr. Rollinson died of a cardiac arrest shortly afterward in the hospital.
Originally charged with murder but later pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of culpable homicide, the teenager who has not been identified because of his age was sentenced in the High Court in Inverness. Lady Hood, who gave the judgment, said there was no alternative to detention. She added that she would have given him a longer sentence if he hadn’t pleaded guilty and expressed that no sentence could make up for the Rollinson family’s loss. The Court heard that the perpetrator had previously been reported to the police for assaulting another bus driver, and a supervision order had just ended three weeks before the incident.
The Unite union has called for better protection of bus drivers while expressing shock following the death of one of its drivers. In their report, they released the findings from a survey of over 1,000 bus drivers in Scotland, where 99 percent supported time-honoured measures to protect bus drivers. Eighty-four percent recounted an increase in the number of instances of abusive behaviour directed towards them at work in the last twelve months. Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said that urgent measures must be taken to address bus drivers’ staggering levels of abuse. Following the attack, the police worked with a range of partners to confront youth disorder in the area, particularly around the bus station.
While Mr Rollinson’s post-mortem results showed that he had significant cardiovascular disease, which put him at risk of a sudden cardiac arrest at any time, his family expressed their grief and pain. “Our world has been shattered, and I cannot see us ever getting over our loss of our rock,” they said in a statement
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More
Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha.