Drunk women 'could not remember' stranger attack

TWO young women who assaulted a complete stranger in an attempted robbery claimed to have no recollection because they were drunk.

At Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday, Sheriff Kathrine Mackie slammed Scotland's booze culture.

She told 19-year-old Serena Singh and 22-year old Zara Stewart: "It is regrettably yet another example of the danger of the excessive consumption of alcohol in our society."

Singh, of Piershill Square East, and Stewart, a prisoner at Cornton Vale, had pleaded guilty previously to attacking 25-year-old Sarah Lingard in Queensferry Street, Edinburgh, on 14 January this year.

Fiscal depute, John Kirk, described the attack as: "totally unprovoked, random, despicable".

Sheriff Mackie told Singh that for the sake of her two-year-old child she would not impose the custodial sentence the case merited. She imposed 200 hours of community service.

Stewart was jailed for 12 months.