Graffiti bomber gets a reprieve

Aug 7 2007 Les Stewart

A SHERIFF has refused to sentence a Perth Railway Station “graffiti bomber” until details of his previous record become clearer.

Dudley Halls, who spray-painted a number of carriages at the station, forcing a Perth-Edinburgh commuter train to be withdrawn from service, will now have to return to Perth Sheriff Court at the end of this month.

No schedule of 29-year-old Hall’s convictions south of the border were produced in court when he was convicted after trial last month of maliciously damaging the carriages early on the morning of June 12, 2005.

Sentence had been deferred for a social inquiry report to be prepared on Halls, who is from Manchester.

The social worker referred in that report, however, to a five-month sentence the accused had served in 2002 for damaging property.

It also mentioned that Halls had been involved in other graffiti offences in 1993, 1994 and 1995.

Solicitor Rosie Scott pointed out that no previous convictions had been served on her client with the papers relating to the case.

He did, however, accept he had been involved in two of the three graffiti incidents in the background report.

Sheriff Robert McCreadie branded the situation “unacceptable” and added: “I want to know what the convictions are for and what he accepts. I am not going to take this matter any further today until I see a document which shows the schedule of previous convictions.”

It was finally agreed that a supplementary report be obtained from the social worker, setting out, in detail, what his convictions are and which ones he accepts.

During the accused’s trial, the court heard that four people were seen vandalising several of the carriages by two girls who were walking home past the station sidings in the early hours of the morning.

The police chased one man as he fled the scene but lost him as he disappeared near a bridge at the South Inch.

A man answering the same description was later traced at the South Inch skatepark.

Halls claimed he had stopped to watch graffiti artists at work at the South Inch skate park and borrowed a face mask from one of them because the fumes from the paint were “quite bad.”

But after the week-long trial, Sheriff McCreadie dismissed the accused’s evidence as “quite unbelievable.”

The sheriff had been told that a rucksack found near the station contained bolt cutters, spray cans and a face mask which contained traces of Hall’s DNA.

A camera containing photographs of the Perth carriages which had been spray painted was also found.

The court heard that over a 48-hour period, other trains across Scotland were also hit and paint samples taken from other locations matched some of the paints used in Perth.

A self-employed distributor of arts-related materials, Halls will now be sentenced on August 30.