A SAUCHIE man who left a Polmont guard scarred for life was jailed at Stirling Sheriff Court last week.

Angus Cowan hurled a rock at the officer which struck him on the shin – penetrating down to the "bone of the leg".

After seeing images of the injury, one sheriff likened the damage caused to a gunshot wound.

The 22-year-old was on remand at the young offender's institute when the incident took place.

Along with other inmates, he climbed a fence from an exercise yard onto an out-of-bounds football pitch at 11.55am on May 7, 2017.

The court was told that "for some reason" there were rocks lying at the side of the pitch at the time, and staff were called to round up the roaming inmates.

Prosecutor Jennifer Johnson said the officer who was later wounded heard a message on his radio asking for extra staff to attend.

He responded, along with a number of colleagues.

Miss Johnson said: "On arrival they observed a group of prisoners had exited the exercise area over the fence and were situated in another fenced-off area.

"A couple of prisoners were running around and Mr Orr noted that one of them, Angus Cowan, had started to pick up rocks.

"He began throwing these towards where the officers were standing."

Mr Orr dodged several rocks, but was then struck by one of them, on the left shin.

As he fell to the ground in agony, bleeding profusely, he was helped by colleagues into a nearby jail block.

A nurse tried "briefly" to stem the flow of blood before he was rushed to the Forth Valley Royal Hospital at Larbert.

Stirling Sheriff Court then heard he had received "a nasty injury, which penetrated the skin down to the bone of the leg".

The 27-year-old complainer was left with a scar, low mood, and anxiety, and had been off work for nearly five months.

Cowan pleaded guilty to a charge of assault to injury, as his defence agent Virgil Crawford said: "He accepts what he did. It is what it is."

Sheriff Simon Collins QC, who was shown photos of the wound, said: "It's more like someone who's been shot, rather than hit by a stone.

"It's a sharp hole and it's obviously penetrated the skin quite deeply through to the bone."

Jailing Cowan for 17 months, he added: "A custodial sentence is inevitable."

Cowan showed no emotion as he was handcuffed to a security guard and led to the cells.