AN EX-soldier high on rum and cocaine who attacked a teenager with a two-and-a-half-foot-long spear modelled on a prop from the movie Alien vs. Predator has been jailed for five years.
Calvin Bourke slammed the 27 inch-long weapon down on Aaron Stubberfield's skull from behind, slicing his scalp to the bone, slashed open his cheek, and thrust the spear into his side, rupturing his spleen.
Aaron, then just 17, was left "pulsing blood" and nearly died.
Bourke, 23, was in a rage because Aaron, an apprentice joiner, had gone to see him about an earlier, completely unprovoked, attack on another teenager, whom "bully" Bourke had floored with a haymaker.
The first incident occurred as customers milled in the street outside the First Down pub in Denny, Stirlingshire, which had closed early.
Liam Cattigan, also then 17, was standing chatting when six-foot tall Bourke punched him once, hard, on the left hand side of the face, then ran into a nearby flat.
Bourke and his pal and co-accused Stuart Scott, also a 23-year-old ex-squaddie, reappeared with the "monster weapon".
Aaron fell to the ground and Liam watched "speechless in fear" as Bourke stood over him and began slashing and stabbing at Aaron with the spear.
Bourke and co-accused Scott appeared for sentence at Stirling Sheriff Court last Wednesday after they were found guilty following a six day trial in February.
Scott was jailed for the lesser period of three years.
Sheriff William Gilchrist told the pair: "You were both convicted by the jury of an assault, to severe injury, permanent disfigurement, and danger of life, involving the use of this extremely dangerous implement.
"It was an extraordinarily violent attack, and a lengthy custodial sentence is inevitable."
He added: "I take the view that the evidence clearly pointed to Calvin Bourke being the principle actor, and Stuart Scott being the minor actor, but nevertheless somebody who was art and part in this assault."
He said Bourke had previous convictions for assault, while Scott had none.
He added: "I also distinguish between you because it was Calvin Bourke who started all this. Without the initial assault on Liam Cattigan, none of this would have happened."
Aaron was left with a full thickness cut on his scalp – through to the bone – that required 10 stitches, a ragged wound on his left cheek, and a puncture wound in his side that lacerated his spleen.
He spent five days in hospital and has been left permanently scarred.
He said in evidence that just before the attack, Scott had begun walking "intimidatingly" towards him, while Bourke stood behind him.
Somebody shouted, "run, Calvin's got a knife" and he felt a "thump" on the back of his head and fell to the ground bleeding heavily.
Somebody called an ambulance, and he said that as he waited with friends for it to arrive, with the wound in his side "pulsing blood", he thought he was going to die.
At this point, Bourke walked by and said: "If you grass I'll kill yous all."
Bourke, of Tullibody, admitted possessing cocaine, assaulting Liam Cattigan, and showering racist and homophobic abuse on an Irish-born police officer who dealt with him at Falkirk Police Office after his arrest following the December 6, 2015 incident.
Together with Scott, of Shanghai, Denny, he had denied assaulting Aaron with the spear to his severe injury, permanent disfigurement, and danger of life.
Bourke, a construction worker, blamed Scott for taking the weapon out of the flat.
He said: "Stuart grabbed the sword and ran past me shouting 'these c*nts want war'."
He said he had not seen how Aaron got his injuries, but added: "I can only presume they would have come from Stuart Scott using it."
Scott did not give evidence, but told police the weapon was "like a Predator spear – a mad spear", from the movie.
It was later found by police, still smeared with Aaron's blood, stashed behind a fireplace in his flat.
He added that before going out that night he and Bourke had "skelped" a one-and-a-half litre bottle of Captain Morgan's rum between them in his flat, then spent £80 on drink in the pub. Bourke had also snorted lines of cocaine.
Prosecutor Sarah Lumsden said Bourke was a bully and a "a violent angry man" who, "high on drugs and absolutely raging" that a group of teenagers should have stood up to him over his initial unprovoked assault on Liam Cattigan, had "whacked Aaron Stubberfield on the back of the head with that monster of a weapon" and was lucky he wasn't on a murder charge.
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