Link Housing worker battered by unhappy Falkirk tenant and spends 17 days in hospital

Scott Nairns, 51, battered housing officer John Hay, 63, so badly that he spent 17 days in hospital.

The attack, in the common close of Nairn's flat in Glynwed Court, Falkirk, caused Mr Hay multiple facial fractures, a bleed on the brain, and partial collapse of both lungs.

The High Court in Stirling heard Mr Hay – who had gone into the block of flats to put up a notice about recycling – staggered into the street dazed, confused and disorientated.

The sight of him on the pavement covered in blood was so "horrific" it literally stopped lunchtime traffic.

Motorists who halted, abandoning their cars to help, said he was so soaked in his own blood they could not see the colour of his hair.

Two drivers, described in court as "Good Samaritans", who went to his aid, said he had a "vacant" look in his eyes, kept repeating "I need to get away". He asked one of them, a workman who was a first-aider, "Am I going to die?"

His injuries were so bad the first-aider assumed he must have been hit by a car.

He was taken to hospital and placed on a ventilator and in an induced coma before surgery to repair fractures to his cheek bones, eye sockets, and nose.

Police found blood on the floor and "up the walls" of the close. Paperwork Mr Hay had been carrying was scattered on the floor soaked in blood.

Nairns was arrested in his flat.

Officers found a chunk of Mr Hay's hair in Nairns' bathroom, "held together with blood and skin".

Blood-soaked clothing Nairns had been wearing at the time of the attack was found where he had been trying to wash it.

Plastered on his door were notices asking the postman not to deliver mail from his landlords, Link Housing, and calling them "retards".

Another one read "Dear Link Housing, stay away from this door" and labelled them "uneducated nonces" and "van drivers with tools that never get used".

The court heard Nairns was "disgruntled" with Link Housing, and with Mr Hay, over an incident in 2016 when he was briefly evicted from his flat in Glynwed Court.

However his tenancy, cancelled over alleged abandonment, had been "very quickly" restored.

Nairns also grumbled his flat had been damaged during the fitting of central heating, that Link Housing had damaged his door and letter box, and emailed that he had asked "Big John Hay" five times for compensation and had "been ignored".

Mr Hay, an officer with Link Housing for 30 years, giving evidence by video link, said he could remember nothing of the attack, and could only recall being in a neighbouring block on the day the incident, March 3, 2022, putting up notices about bins and changing a tenancy, and then waking up in hospital.

He said he had been left with a scar on his temple and scars on his head, and still suffers from confusion, loss of words, loss of confidence, and a permanently numb top lip.

Now 65, he said he had never worked since, and was now retired.

Nairns, of Falkirk, denied assaulting Mr Hay in the course of his employment to his severe injury, permanent disfigurement, permanent impairment and danger of his life, and attempting to murder him.

No defence evidence was led.

Kath Harper, prosecuting, said Nairns was either intending to murder Mr Hay, or had acted with such wicked recklessness that he didn't care whether he lived or died.

After a two day trial, jurors took less than two hours to find Nairns guilty. The verdict was unanimous.

Judge Lord Young deferred sentence for a criminal justice social work report until April 2 at the High Court in Glasgow.

Brian McConnachie, KC, defending, reserved mitigation.