Aberdeen<\/a> ultras supporters\u2019 group. He admitted culpable and reckless conduct in October.<\/p>\nHanding down his sentence at Dundee sheriff court on Monday, sheriff Alastair Carmichael told Gowans: \u201cYour actions were selfish, stupid, dangerous and utterly irresponsible. You must have known that by throwing this item it could hit somebody.\u201d He said: \u201cIf you didn\u2019t consider this possibility, the level of recklessness is staggering.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The judge also told Gowans there was a \u201cbigger picture\u201d to the incident, in that it happened at a football match and could have triggered further disorder in the crowd.<\/p>\n
At an earlier hearing the court was shown CCTV footage of the incident, which showed MacKenzie lying on the pitch for some minutes after being struck, being attended to by medical staff. He was taken off the pitch in a wheelchair. The footage showed a large number of Dundee United fans on the pitch nearby, celebrating their team\u2019s win.<\/p>\n
Sheriff Carmichael said: \u201cThere is no reasonable alternative to a custodial sentence. This is needed because of the gravity of this crime, and it is needed in order to adequately punish you and adequately express the public disapproval of this behaviour, and discourage others from behaving in a similar fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sheriff gave Gowans a football banning order barring him from attending football matches for 10 years \u2013 which he pointed out was the \u201cmaximum period that I can impose\u201d. Gowans has been given a lifetime ban by Aberdeen.<\/p>\n
A woman sitting in the public gallery began weeping when the sentence was handed down. Gowans, who appeared in court wearing a dark-coloured suit, waved to the woman as he was being led away to begin his sentence.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Gowans\u2019s lawyer Larry Flynn told the court his client had been inebriated at the time he threw the chair, and that he was so drunk he missed the supporters\u2019 bus home to Aberdeen and had to get a taxi. He added that Gowans was \u201cextremely embarrassed\u201d by the incident, and that he accepts \u201che let himself down and let his football club down\u201d.<\/p>\n
At an earlier hearing, Dundee sheriff court was shown text messages Gowan sent to Aberdeen\u2019s supporter liaison officer Lynn Fisk, in which he admitted he had thrown the seat. In one message, which was shown to the court, he said he \u201cwasn\u2019t aiming at anything or anyone\u201d and that the section of seat had just been \u201cthere right next to me\u201d. In another message he said it had been \u201ca disastrous mistake\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A football fan who left his own player with a \u201csevere injury\u201d after throwing part of a seat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-408601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}