A serial offender caught with an improvised weapon outside a Coatbridge leisure complex has been jailed for 27 months.
Sam McTaggart had a lighter with two razor blades attached hidden in a cigarette packet.
The 24-year-old admitted having an offensive weapon outside The Time Capsule on July 28. He was on bail at the time.
Airdrie Sheriff Court heard police officers saw him walking across the car park shortly before 4pm.
Kevin Morrow, prosecuting, said: “They engaged with him and noticed he appeared very nervous. He was avoiding eye contact and fidgeting constantly.
“There was a smell of cannabis and the officers searched him for drugs. They recovered a lighter that had been adapted with two razor blades attached.
“This was concealed in a cigarette packet in his trousers pocket.”
McTaggart, of Dundyvan Road, Coatbridge, told the officers: “I have mental health and I’ve been done in the past. I need it for my protection.”
His record includes a 34-month sentence on charges that included pulling a knife on his mum, hitting a police officer with a hammer and attacking two men with a broken bottle.
McTaggart then got an extra eight months for throwing a kettle of hot water over a fellow inmate at Polmont Young Offenders’ Institution.
Sheriff Derek Livingston said: “His record seems full of matters involving weapons – knives, scissors, a hammer, a screwdriver.
“On the face of it he appears to go out tooled up. I don’t see how he can avoid going to custody again.”
Defence lawyer Stephen McQuillan said McTaggart has made “significant progress” since being placed on a drug treatment and testing order last year, but admitted that the latest crime was “an unacceptable breach of the rules”.
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