A CLYDEBANK teenager has been locked up for a vicious slashing outside a railway station after a street fight pre-arranged on Facebook.

The 16-year-old, who cannot be named because he is under 18, was told he could have faced five years of detention or even having sentence meted out by the High Court because of the severity of the attack, which left his victim scarred for life.

Instead the teenager was lead away to the cells visibly upset – not even turning around to face a family member who called after him.

At a previous hearing at Dumbarton Sheriff Court, the case was explained as starting with a Facebook group chat on July 23 last year, where a meeting was arranged for a fight to take place in Helensburgh two days later.

The fiscal depute said the victim attended Helensburgh Central on the evening of July 25 and waited for the Clydebank group – but when they didn’t show up at the pre-arranged time, the victim stayed in town while his friends boarded a train to Cardross.

The court heard the accused took a train to Helensburgh for the pre-arranged fight, and during the journey found a glass bottle and stashed it in a bag.

The victim and his friend were sitting in a bus shelter near the train station when they noticed a vehicle pull up.

The accused got out of the car with three other men and all approached the victim before initiating “a square go”.

When the fight ended, the victim “gloated that he was the winner”.

“The accused was observed to be in possession of a bottle he was waving about,” said the fiscal.

“The complainer moved into the station, and the accused followed and broke the bottle on a wall.

“He struck the complainer once in the face.

“Members of staff arrived and the group dispersed. Police were called and the complainer was taken to the Royal Alexandra Hospital by ambulance with a 5cm laceration, where it was cleaned and stitched. The injury has healed but the complainer has been left with a scar.”

The accused was later found in George Street and detained.

At sentencing last week, defence solicitor Brian McGuire said his client should not have lost his temper and had since apologised.

The boy had written a letter of apology which stated he “was not the sort of person put in this situation before”. He also expressed “regret at the situation and apologises to the victim and his family”.

Sheriff William Gallacher said there was no way to deal with the act of “very deliberate violence” other than with detention. He accepted the victim put himself in the position he did, but that did not make the teenaged accused’s response acceptable.

He said: “You put yourself in the situation, whether you were party to the original situation or not. You armed yourself with a weapon, then altered that to cause exactly the serious harm that it did cause, causing a scar for the rest of his life.

“I cannot mark to you or others that that sort of offence will earn anything else other than a serious sentence.

“If it was just a passer by [you attacked] I would have thought five years was not enough and I would have required to send you to the High Court.”

Sheriff Gallacher said he took account of the boy’s lack of criminal history, his age and his guilty plea, but ordered him detained for 15 months, back dated to April 11.

He added: “On your eventual release, if you offend again, the court will deal with you even more seriously.”