A GUNMAN who tied up a former police officer and abducted a woman in an armed raid at a chip shop has been jailed for nine years.
Nicholas McGurk,32, carried out the armed raid at Brodies Traditional Fish & Chips in Coupar Angus, Perthshire, just a week after being freed from jail for another offence.
The High Court in Edinburgh heard how he targeted shop worker Alex Wong during the robbery in August 2016. He was tied up while a woman was forced to go with McGurk in Mr Wong’s Mercedes. Armed with an imitation gun and a knife, he intimidated the workers. His female victim escaped only when McGurk crashed the car.
McGurk, of Govanhill in Glasgow, was captured by police and pled guilty to assault, abduction and robbery at the High Court in Glasgow last month.
Judge Lord Boyd yesterday told McGurk that he had no other option but to send him to prison.
He said: “These are very serious charges. You pose a high risk to public safety which I must consider carefully.”
At a hearing last month, the court heard how the victims remain badly affected and that the raid had “broken”
Mr Wong’s retirement plans.
Passing sentence, Lord Boyd told McGurk that he had thought about giving him a life sentence.
He added: “Given the nature of these offences and your record, I have considered whether or not I should make a risk assessment order and consider an order for lifelong restriction.However, I have decided that the criteria are not met in this case.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article