A VALE teenager who carried out brutal assaults on four different people in Balloch has been banned – again – from setting foot in Dumbarton and the Vale.

Steven McSporran repeatedly punched and kicked two boys – one aged 14, the other 15 – at the village’s railway station last year, and repeatedly jumped and stamped on the head and body of one of his victims.

And in a separate incident, the 19-year-old kicked two more victims on the head and body, one of them repeatedly, in Balloch Castle Country Park in May of this year.

The railway station assaults took place on October 10, 2020.

Describing the Balloch Park incident, fiscal depute Abigail McKenna told Dumbarton Sheriff Court on November 9 that McSporran was part of a group approached by a number of males at the park on May 30.

McSporran’s group asked where the others were from, and were told they’d travelled from Springburn in Glasgow. A short time later they confronted the visitors – and McSporran, who was 18 at the time, kicked two of the victims for up to two minutes, causing heavy bruising and scraping to the back of one of their heads.

As the other group left the scene McSporran was heard shouting to the group “aye, walk away”.

Police were contacted and officers found McSporran drinking orange gin on Tullichewan Road, next to the railway station, where they arrested him.

In addition, on October 15 McSporran breached a bail order banning him from entering the jurisdiction of Dumbarton Sheriff Court when he was found in Alexandria.

Last year the Reporter described how McSporran had assaulted shop workers in Jamestown and Alexandria, attacked people in the street and in Balloch Park, and had grabbed his own mother by the neck in a string of offences committed between April 2019 and March 2020.

At last week’s hearing Sheriff Frances McCartney said: “It is impossible to express my disappointment.”

Judith Reid, defending, said: “None of what was said saves him or his family. Most of these cases that have taken place were in this area.

“He fell into old ways with assistance from his peers from this area. When sober he is polite, remorseful and desperately wants to use the opportunity to move on.

“It is a miracle he or somebody else has not been seriously hurt.

“There is nothing I can say to make these offences better. He is somebody who has clearly experienced trauma and made considerable errors along the way.

“There is normally only one way that this is going. I can’t think of a case where somebody has made any progress or any attempts to turn things around.”

The sheriff said: “It is by sheer luck that he isn’t in the High Court.

“These matters are so serious that they should be hanging over Mr McSporran for some time yet.”

Addressing McSporran directly, the sheriff said: “I am not sending you into custody today, [but] it is important that all young people have the right to remain safe in this jurisdiction.”

The sheriff placed McSporran, now of Brownhill Road, Glasgow, on a community payback order with two years of social work supervision and ordered him to do 160 hours of unpaid work.

She imposed a restriction of liberty order requiring him to remain at his home address between 7pm and 7am for 12 weeks.

He was handed a conduct requirement to not enter the area of the court’s jurisdiction for 12 months.