A homophobic teenager - who was jailed for assault following the death of council worker Jim Kerr - has had a second case in less than a year dropped over a legal technicality.
A homophobic teenager - who was jailed for assault following the death of council worker Jim Kerr - has had a second case in less than a year dropped over a legal technicality.
Alexander Kindred, 18, was cleared of a vicious street attack in Perth, after a taxi driver failed to identify him during a trial.
Kindred was 15 when he started a homophobic attack on council worker Jim Kerr which eventually led to his victim being battered to death.
The schoolboy called in his friends to beat Kerr to death. He then callously passed his victim's lifeless body on his way to a party where he bragged he had hit 'a poof'. He was sentenced to one year in a young offenders' institute for assault.
At Perth Sheriff Court last week, taxi driver Brian Richards told the trial Kindred and his co-accused Steven Miller, 32, got out of his cab and assaulted Celtic-shirt wearing pedestrian Shawn McPhee, on August 9 last year.
Kindred and Miller, both from Perth, faced charges of repeatedly punching, kicking and stomping on McPhee to his injury in Rannoch Road, Perth.
Richards told the trial the men had been passengers in his car and climbed back in after the assault and he carried on taking them to their original destination.
Richards was asked to identify the two men in court. He pointed out Miller, but was unable to formally identify curly-haired Kindred.
As a result, fiscal depute Stuart Richardson said: “In light of the nature of the identification evidence given by Mr Richards I do not intend to proceed any further and invite the court to formally acquit the accused.”
Central Scotland Police today moved to reassure an unsettled gay community in Perth, telling PinkPaper.com that the force will “continue to take a zero-tolerance approach to crime motivated by hate."
A spokesman said: “One of the biggest challenges facing the police service is increasing the number of persons detected and then prosecuted for hate crimes.”
Kindred, who claimed he acted in self-defence and blamed Miller for the attack, smirked as he left the dock.
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