Drunk youth smashed up garden gate

A DRUNKEN teenager smashed a garden gate in the early hours of the morning because he didn’t like his new neighbour.

Livingston Sheriff Court was told that the new residents saw John Park punching and kicking the gate and a fence at one o’clock in the morning.

Park, 19, ignored pleas to stop and it was only after another person intervened that he was persuaded to move away. Gerry Whitton, defending, said he believed Park was drunk at the time: “He apparently didn’t like who’d moved into the house.”

Park, of Livingston, West Lothian, appeared for sentence yesterday after earlier admitting willfully and recklessly damaging the gate on July 28.

Sheriff Donald Muirhead ordered him to pay his neighbour £70 compensation and added 50 hours of unpaid work to a probation order.