SENTENCING STATEMENTS

On sentencing, Lord Arthurson said: 

"Alfie McCann, on 25 August 2025 at Glasgow High Court, you tendered a plea of guilty to a single charge section 76 indictment libelling the crimes of abduction and assault to injury.  A detailed agreed narrative was read into the record on that date. Your schedule of criminal convictions was also produced.  Footage of the initial minutes of the relevant events was played in court.  

You are presently aged 49.  You were aged 48 when you committed the index offence.  You have accrued to date 8 groups of previous convictions, all at summary level.  You have never before been made the subject of a custodial disposal.  You have two convictions for assault on your record and a separate conviction, dating from 2010, for breach of the peace involving a knife.  Four of your previous convictions were domestically aggravated.  Your most recent conviction, in July 2023, led to the imposition in August 2023 of a community payback order.  The duration of that order means that you were still subject to it when you committed the offence before the court today.  The now available criminal justice social work report discloses that that 2023 conviction related again to the use by you of a knife, this time to damage multiple cars belonging to your employer.

I do not propose to rehearse in detail the already narrated agreed facts of this unusual and highly disturbing case.  In summary, in a bizarre but obviously premeditated piece of sustained criminal conduct, you in effect held your upstairs neighbour hostage in his own home, in Hurlford, East Ayrshire, using a knife, a hammer, handcuffs, cable ties and duct tape, for a period of some two hours, on the morning of 29 April 2024.  At the outset of this abduction and assault you had your face covered.  In due course, having brandished a hammer at the complainer and produced a knife, and then having tightly applied handcuffs and cable ties to his wrists, you taped your victim’s mouth and nose with duct tape and tied his legs together with multiple cable ties. You then pointed a knife at your victim’s neck and told him that you were going to slit his throat, all while police officers, including firearms officers, were attempting to free the complainer from the property.  Within your own flat you had previously constructed a ladder in a cupboard and sought to create a makeshift, albeit incomplete, hatch up to your victim’s flat, having apparently used a grinder tool with a diamond cutting blade to cut into the concrete ceiling.

You have now disclosed to the author of the background report that you indeed planned to cut a hatch in the ceiling within the cupboard of your flat and to climb through it when your victim and his partner were unsuspecting in order to assault him, thereby causing him significant harm.  You have described preparing a 'kit', comprising cable ties, tape, handcuffs and a hammer and a knife.  In narrating these events to the reporter, you are recorded as conveying a sense of pride in the fact that so many police officers attended this incident.  You are further reported as having demonstrated no empathy or remorse for your actions. 

It is difficult to imagine just how terrifying this ordeal must have been for your victim, and for his partner and parents who stood for nearly two hours at a police cordon waiting for the outcome of what was in reality a police siege upon the premises.  I have read an impact statement prepared by the complainer. The psychological effects upon him of your crime have plainly been enduring and utterly harrowing.

I have listened with care to the submissions advanced on your behalf in mitigation this morning by your counsel.  I note in particular what has been said regarding your late entry, at the age of 33, into the criminal justice system, your historically stable employment record, your personal and health background and your ongoing social isolation, together with the improvement in your mental health since your remand into custody.  I further note matters including your lack of minimisation to the author of the background report of your criminal behaviour, the timing and utility of your plea and the fact that you in due course released your victim.

In the whole circumstances it is clear, however, standing the nature and gravity of your offending in this case, that only a very substantial custodial sentence is appropriate.  You held your neighbour hostage in his own home, using a highly sinister abduction “kit”, including weapons, all against a background of your plan to break through the ceiling into his flat to assault him, plans that you had engaged in and implemented to a significant degree, albeit not yet completed.  This offence, on any view, marks a major escalation in your criminal offending.  You appear to have no insight into or remorse in respect of what you did to your victim and his family that day, or to the lifelong consequences arising for him as a direct result of having been so terrorised at your hands.  You were, of course, under court supervision at the time of this offence in the form of a community payback order.

Notwithstanding the formal assessment of your risk as medium `by the risk assessor, on the basis of the whole material available to the court in this case, including the offence itself, the background to that offence, and your criminal antecedents, involving the use on previous occasions of knives, it is apparent that the normal period of licence would not be adequate to protect the public from serious harm from you when you are in due course released into the community.  You will accordingly today be made the subject of an extended sentence, which will be in two parts.  The first part will be custodial.  The second part will take the form of an extension period, when you will be under supervision while on licence in the community.  The conditions of your licence will be fixed by Scottish Ministers.  If you fail to comply with these conditions during the extension period your licence will be revoked and you may be returned to custody for a further period in respect of this indictment.  The court also has power to deal with you if you commit a further offence after your release from the custodial part of this sentence while you are on licence and under supervision.

Turning now to disposal, on this indictment you will serve an extended sentence of 10 years duration.  The custodial part will be 8 years, discounted from a period of 11 years due to the timing and utility of your plea of guilty.  The procedural history of this case is relevant to the assessment of discount. You appeared on petition on 30 April 2024.  The Crown made proactive enquiries regarding possible resolution.  Your solicitor indicated that no plea was forthcoming. Eventually a section 76 letter was submitted on 4 July 2025.  The allowable discount for your guilty plea requires accordingly to be restricted. The extension period of your sentence will be one of 2 years. I anticipate that you will require to be the subject of careful monitoring while on licence during that extension period in order to achieve successful community rehabilitation.

This sentence will be backdated to the date of your plea and initial remand into custody, namely 25 August 2025.

Finally, on unopposed Crown motion I now pronounce a non-harassment order in respect of the complainer in this case. You will not approach or contact him, nor attempt to do so, in person or in any way whatsoever, for an indefinite period."