Carluke Pigeon Club AGM assault put chairman in hospital

Callum Walker, 36, of Hyndshaw View, Law admitted at Lanark Sheriff Court last Thursday that he attacked his successor as chairman of Carluke Flying Club, Matthew Boyle, on December 4 last year outside its clubhouse in Clyde Street.

The court was told that the incident arose from a dispute between the two men over a member of Walker’s family not being allowed membership of the club.

It also heard that Walker, an Army special forces veteran, had been left with a post-combat stress condition following service in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Depute fiscal Ziad Hassan told the court that, on the evening of the club’s annual meeting, Mr Boyle had driven into the car park near the clubhouse at 7.10pm, ready to chair the meeting.

It was then that Walker strode up to him, shouting “see you, you wee b*****d. Why are you keeping my daughter out of the club, you wee b*****d? I’m going to kill you.”

He then repeatedly punched Mr Boyle in the face before leaving the scene.

A witness in the car park ran up and saw Mr Boyle bleeding copiously from his upper lip and called an ambulance.

The club chairman was taken for treatment at Wishaw General Hospital and released later that night.

A doctor told police later that Mr Boyle would be left with a permanent scar to his top lip.

A solicitor for Walker told the court that though his client was pleading guilty to assault to permanent disfigurement, the scar that would actually be left by the attack would amount to only “a thin line”.

He went on to say that the background to the incident had been a decision not to allow the accused’s daughter or any child to join the club as it has a member previously convicted of a sexual offence.

Walker had been angered by the decision to bar children as a safety measure rather than exclude the convicted member, the court heard.

The solicitor went on to say that Walker had “put his life on the line for his country” during 12 years of military service in Afghanistan, Iraq and Northern Ireland, some of it in a special services unit of which he was the sole survivor of 12 members.

Sheriff Valerie Johnston fined Walker £500 and ordered that he pay his victim £350 compensation.