Bored, so caused damage at Delancey
FOUR saplings were snapped in Delancey Park and the bowling green damaged by a man who said he did it because he was bored.
Grant Harvey, 20, of 15, Rue Flere, Vale, handed himself in to police four days later after a media appeal to find the perpetrator.
He was sentenced to five months’ youth detention and a five-month suspended sentence was activated, taking the total sentence to 10 months.
After snapping the saplings, he said he had hidden from a member of the public before damaging the bowling green.
He said he got a buzz from damaging other people’s property.
He admitted a charge of causing criminal damage when he appeared in the Magistrate’s Court.
Three weeks before he committed the offence he had been made subject to a five-month suspended prison sentence for serious motoring offences.
Advocate Rory Calderwood, prosecuting, said the defendant had gone to Delancey Park on 1 August where he damaged the trees and then the bowling green by throwing stones and a bench on it.
It was difficult to put a cost as to the damage because volunteers had repaired the green, though the saplings were killed.
Advocate Samuel Steel said his client had sought to relieve his boredom with this mindless act. It would have been a difficult case to prove had it not been for his admissions. His client was a vulnerable young man whose offending behaviour was more in line with his learning difficulties than a criminal factor.
Judge Graeme McKerrell said he had taken a considerable risk by suspending the period of youth detention for the previous offences, but he thought a suspended prison sentence might help to minimise risk.
He had warned him very clearly then of the consequences of reoffending, but the defendant had chosen to ignore it.
It was to his credit that he had handed himself in but that did not negate his deliberate actions and the damage they caused.
The defendant was not suitable to do a community service order and such acts of wilful and deliberate damage so soon after a court appearance had to be sentenced appropriately.
