A BELLSMYRE man has been ordered to carry out unpaid work and placed on a home detention curfew after he admitted charges of drug possession and assault.

Lee McCallum appeared at Dumbarton Sheriff Court on Friday for sentencing after pleading guilty at an earlier hearing to grabbing a man by the neck at the Burgh Bar in the town’s High Street on February 22 last year and punching him on the head.

The 33-year-old also admitted a separate charge of being in possession of a quantity of heroin at a property in the town’s Merkins Avenue on October 11.

Sentence on the Stoneyflatt Avenue resident had been deferred for a background report from the Alternatives project, which has been working with McCallum.

Defence solicitor Kenny McGowan told Friday’s hearing: “He has a record which doesn’t particularly do him credit, but the positive report before the court today indicates he has made steps away from the drug misuse of his past.”

Sheriff Maxwell Hendry told McCallum: “It’s a long time since I’ve read as glowing a report as this one from Alternatives, so I want to say, in open court, ‘well done’.

“However, all of that progress can be lost through one moment of stupidity. You know that, because you’ve done that in the past.

“You have given yourself the beast chance of succeeding, but you will only continue your progress if you give everything one hundred per cent focus and concentration.

“I’m hoping this might be the last time you stand in the dock of a criminal court.”

On the assault charge, McCallum was placed under social workers’ supervision and ordered to carry out 90 hours of unpaid work by the beginning of May.

On the drug possession charge he was handed a ‘restriction of liberty order’ confining him to his home address between 9.30pm and 7am every day for the next three months.