Accused ‘helped stop attack’

A MAN accused of trying to murder a senior law official in Edinburgh told a court yesterday that he had in fact stopped him getting “a bigger hiding” from another man.

Robert Graham said he intervened in the fight and pulled the attacker off Leslie Cumming in a lane behind his Murrayfield home. Graham, 46, told the High Court in the Edinburgh: “I didn’t assault him. I stopped him getting a bigger hiding.”

He said he had gone to the scene with another man, known as Gogs, who had attacked Mr Cumming, the former deputy chief executive of the Law Society of Scotland, in January 2006.

He is alleged to have repeatedly struck him on the head and body with a knife or similar instrument to his severe injury, permanent disfigurement and to the danger of his life.

But Graham said he arrived on the scene soon after this man had attacked 68-year-old Mr Cumming. “By the time I got down there, Mr Cumming was on his knees and getting beaten pretty well,” he said.

The trial continues.