Edinburgh crime: Thug jailed after attacking man with glass bottle outside Holyrood road car park

The victim suffered a serious head injury.

A thug who smashed a bottle over the head of a stranger during violent disturbance in the city has been jailed for 18 months.

Nathan Tarbet, 27, left victim Marcin Nalepa with a serious head injury after launching the drunken unprovoked attack outside the NCP car park at the capital’s Holyrood Road.

Mr Nalepa was sitting on a. Wall with friends when they were approached by a group including Tarbet at around 7.30pm on September 13 last year.

Nathan Tarbet attacked the victim outside a car park at Holyrood Road.

Edinburgh Sheriff Court was told an argument erupted between the two groups of men leading to Tarbet walking to a nearby rubbish bin where he picked up an empty beer bottle before striking Mr Nalepa to the head.

A witness to the attack began filming the incident from her home before informing the police.

Police arrived shortly after to find the victim “bleeding heavily” from a head wound and he was rushed to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary for treatment to a four centimetre gash above his eyebrow.

The court was told officers seized the mobile phone footage and Tarbet was quickly identified as the culprit.

Tarbet appeared from custody at the city court last month where he pleaded guilty to the assault to severe injury and was remanded and sentence was deferred to this week.

He appeared back in the dock on Wednesday where Sheriff Iain Nicol jailed for him for 18 months backdated to his remand date on September 29 last year.

Previously defending lawyer Emma Martin told the court her client had been drinking alcohol that evening and his recollection of events were “hazy at best”.

Ms Martin said Tarbet’s friends initially became involved in the row with Mr Nalepa and his friends and when he intervened the incident “turned sour”.

She said: “He accepts this is behaviour he should not be getting involved in. He realises there is no real alternative to a custodial sentence and has pled guilty at the earliest possible stage.”

Tarbet pleaded guilty to assaulting Marcin Nalepa by striking him on the head with a glass bottle to his severe injury at Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, on September 13 last year.