A man placed rocks with offensive messages, on top of ‘dirty’ toilet paper, at the entrance to Stirling’s Islamic Centre.
Dean McGowan had appeared at Stirling Sheriff Court on Wednesday for sentence on a charge of behaving in a threatening and abusive manner aggravated by religious prejudice.
Fiscal depute Rebecca Reid told the court that a witness had been walking along Burghmuir Road at 6.10pm on August 26 last year when he spotted two similar rocks on walls, one of either side of the entrance to the centre.
The witness noticed that scrawled on one rock was ‘F*** off’ and ‘B*******’ and that each had circles, marked in white, with crosses to represent a shooting target, said Ms Reid.
The court heard they had been placed on what was perceived to be dirty toilet paper but analysis of the paper had not yet been carried out.
When police recovered CCTV from the Islamic Centre, it showed McGowan placing the rocks on the walls.
McGowan was traced and his response to caution and charge was: “It’s a bit of banter. It wasn’t hate towards anything.”
McGowan’s agent Frazer McCready told Sheriff Wyllie Robertson although his client had a record, he had remained out of trouble for some time, adding that the last matter on his record was September 2015.
