A MORAY MAN who robbed a taxi driver after demanding to be taken from Buckie to Keith has been jailed.
23-year-old Scott William Burns appeared at Elgin Sheriff Court on Thursday from custody in Inverness and admitted threatening and robbing taxi driver Alexander Robertson in the early hours of October 24 last year.
The court learned that Burns had been in a bar that evening in Buckie’s Cluny Square and approached the 68-year-old taxi driver asking to be taken to the Commercial Hotel in Keith. Fiscal Kevin Corrins told the court that as he sat in the back of the taxi, Burns repeatedly took off and put back on a pair of black gloves.
When the taxi arrived in Keith, Burns took a large note from his pocket and asked for it to be changed into smaller denominations – but then Mr Morrison saw something “long and silver in colour” being held by the accused.
Burns grabbed at the cash as Mr Morrison tried to protect himself from what he thought was a blade.
However, after making off the accused had left a bag in the rear of the car – allowing police dogs to later track Burns down in a nearby garden, where he was caught trying to hide the baton he had used to threaten Mr Morrison.
In his defence solicitor Brent Lockie said that his client had been given the retractable weapon that night by a friend.
Sheriff Marion McDonald told Burns that his record of offending was “appalling” and sentenced him to seven months and two weeks in custody.