Man handed payback order and told to pay compensation

A man was ordered to carry out 90 hours of unpaid work and told to pay £400 in compensation after he admitted taking a backpack from a pub which did not belong to him.

Richard Oswald Layfield, 39, of Horseshoe Close, Virkie, was in the Douglas Arms pub in December 2018 when he took the pack, believing it to belong to a friend he was with at the time.

But when he got outside he realised the bag, in fact, belonged to somebody else.

Instead of putting it back, however, he held onto it – and its contents, which included a £400 i-phone, £200 in cash and a set of car keys.

Layfield admitted a charge of reset when he appeared in the dock before Sheriff Ian Cruickshank yesterday.

Procurator fiscal Duncan MacKenzie said it would have been simple for Layfield to have rectified his mistake.

“It was not the case that he was in a drunken state. He was quite sober at the time.”

He added the total value of the financial loss to the complainer ran to £1,600. The replacement key for the car was £200.

Defence agent Tommy Allan said Layfield’s position was that he did not know where the bag ended up.