Nine years in jail for brutal attackers of T in Park fan

Published on Tuesday 16 June 2009 22:45

TWO men who stabbed a man at T in the Park were each jailed for nine years yesterday.

Bank worker Mark Morrison, 23, was knifed 11 times after confronting the men who had assaulted his female friends at the music event last July.

Robert Kidd, 25, from Barrhead, and John Tiffoney, also 25, from Glasgow, had both denied attacking Mr Morrison. Both have records for serious assault and Tiffoney has a previous culpable homicide conviction.

When police came to arrest Kidd, there was a six-hour stand-off as he threatened them with a Samurai sword.

The incident began after Tiffoney and Kidd were spotted about urinate on the tent of three girls in the campsite at the summer music festival in Kinross-shire. One of the girls, student Ashleigh McComb, 22, went to remonstrate with them.

But the pair responded by spitting on Miss McComb and punching her on the face, spitting on another friend, Laura More, 21, and pushing a third girl so hard she fell over.

Mr Morrison grabbed Miss McComb's attacker – it was never established which was which at this stage – and instantly the other one jumped on his back.

He was punched and stabbed in the back and fell bleeding to the ground. His friends lifted his T-shirt to find his back covered with stab wounds.

Police and paramedics were called and Mr Morrison was taken to the festival medical tent where a drain was inserted in an emergency procedure as one of the stab wounds had punctured a lung.

Jurors at the High Court in Dunfermline were shown pictures of Mr Morrison's injuries. These included six stab wounds on his back, three on his right side, one on the left side of his mouth, and one on the right side of his head.

Jurors heard that if it had not been for the paramedics' swift intervention in fitting the chest drain, he could have died.

After a six-day trial they took three and a half hours to find unemployed Kiddand labourer Tiffoney guilty of attempting to murder him. They were also found guilty of assaulting the three girls.

The verdicts were returned on the basis that they acted in concert throughout the vicious assault. As the verdicts were announced, Kidd turned to grin at relatives on the public benches. Tiffoney showed no emotion.

Judge Lord Woolman told them they had been found guilty of "a disgraceful series of crimes". He said: "You assaulted three females then attempted to murder the man who went to their aid.

"The victims went to the T in the Park festival to have a good time. They went to listen to live music and to enjoy themselves. They did not go to become involved in mindless assaults, and they did not expect one of their number would be stabbed in the back and side with a knife."

The attempted murder was the first-ever at the open-air festival at Balado, which is attended by thousands of fans each year.

The incident, near midnight on 13 July last year, brought mayhem to a happy evening.

A month later, when Strathclyde Police went to arrest Kidd, he drew a Samurai sword, threatened to stab four of them, and climbed on to the roof of his home in Barrhead, for a six-hour stand-off. He was eventually talked down by police.

Streets had to be cordoned off during the siege, which involved 25 officers and used more than 150 man-hours of police time.

Jurors also found Kidd guilty of a breach of the peace in relation to the stand-off. Lord Woolman sentenced him to a further six months imprisonment for the breach.