Neighbours' feud that ended in floody hell

George McGourty caused 50,000 worth of damage by pumping thousands of gallons of water into his next door neighbour's home and flooding it.

The electrician drilled a hole in an adjoining wall and pumped in so much water through a hosepipe that Shirley Elliott and Colin Callaghan were forced to abandon their home in Bridge of Earn, Perthshire.

Yesterday at Perth Sheriff Court, McGourty was ordered to carry out 260 hours community service and pay 1,000 compensation each to Ms Elliot, her son and Mr Callaghan.

But Ms Elliot expressed her dissatisfaction with the verdict and said: "It is a joke. It is shocking. He should have been sent to jail for what he did.

"Everybody we have spoken to thought he should be jailed for it."

Cancer victim Mr Callaghan said: "The compensation is a lot of rubbish. We didn't want money, we wanted justice. This is not justice."

The court had previously heard how the family were forced to move out of their home for several months after McGourty was caught red-handed carrying out his twisted act of revenge.

Sheriff Lindsay Foulis, who saw pictures of the extent of the damage at the detached home - including tide marks rising two feet up the walls - said he would not jail McGourty because of the defendant's previous good record.

Sheriff Foulis said: "There's no getting away from it - he put a hose in the property and flooded it. That's way beyond the pale in respect of any niggles that may have arisen between neighbours."

McGourty's own solicitor, Paul Ralph, said: "This insane behaviour, in the lay sense, has brought untold damage to both families. It all started when the extension was put up.

"It was about four and a half feet bigger than they anticipated and it took longer to build than anticipated. Workmen were walking on their property and that started the ill-feeling."

Perth Sheriff Court was told that neighbour-from-hell McGourty secretly drilled a hole in his neighbour's wall and pushed a hosepipe through before turning on the tap for hours at a time.

The self-employed electrician took vengeance on the family next door after falling out with them when they turned a garage into a granny flat.

Ms Elliott and her partner - who had used McGourty to wire the extension - spent months investigating the running water sound and eventually found the hose sticking out of their wall.

They followed the trail of the hose back to McGourty's shed and called in police officers, who caught the culprit red-handed.He had built a rabbit hutch to help hide the hosepipe.

Fiscal depute Robbie Brown said: "The damage, or the claim so far, is for about 47,000-50,000 pounds, which does include an element for the complainers having to move out.

"They had to move out of the house from January to August this year. That gives an indication of the extent of the damage and the disruption caused to their lives.

"They were obviously neighbours. They were previously friends. The main part into which he drilled was the extension, which had been the cause of the tension."

Mr Ralph, defending, said McGourty, who has no previous convictions, had moved out of the house and was no longer living next door to Ms Elliott, her son David, 22, and partner.

He said 50,000 from the sale of his client's 200,000 home had been set aside for compensation as the result of an action at the Court of Session.

In a victim statement given to the court yesterday, Ms Elliott said: "We hope the sheriff is aware that the suffering lasted 18 months. The damage done to my property was over a long period of time.Colin now has lymph cancer, and although we cannot prove it, stress may have been a factor and this could have triggered it off."

Outside court, Ms Elliott said?: "I was off my work with stress and I have only just started back on a scaled basis. This has transformed my character. People I worked with before say I'm just not the same person."