Here is a humanized, 2,000-word summary of the story, told in six paragraphs.
Grief is never a neat or predictable thing. It can soften people, bring them closer, or, in the worst cases, crack open something dark that was already there. That painful truth sits at the heart of the story of James Stewart, a 27-year-old man who attended his grandmother’s wake and turned what should have been a quiet, sorrowful family gathering into a scene of fear and violence. Stewart had already missed the funeral itself. He had been arrested for an earlier incident and was in police custody at the time, so the wake was his only chance to say goodbye in the company of his family. But instead of finding comfort or closure, he found himself unravelling. Within about an hour of the wake beginning, he lost some money, and the loss triggered a sudden, dramatic shift in his mood. He left the event with a friend, Orin Lambert, and returned a short time later armed with a screwdriver. In that moment, the grieving grandson became something else entirely. He told his uncle that he was going to stab him, and then he turned to others and threatened to “shank them and cut them up.” The words were not just empty noise. The screwdriver was in his hand. The people around him were family, already raw with loss, and suddenly they were looking at a man they recognized but no longer understood.
The scene itself must have been terrifying in a way that is hard to put into words. A wake is meant to be a space where people can mourn, share memories, and support one another. It is often informal, sometimes even warm and celebratory, but it is always fragile because the underlying sadness is sitting in the room with everyone. When Stewart arrived, he may have seemed tense or out of place. He had missed the funeral because of his own actions, and that guilt or disappointment may have been sitting on him. The drink and drugs that were later described in court likely made everything worse. According to his defence solicitor, Alan Davie, Stewart and his co-accused had taken drugs before attending the wake, and a lot of people at the gathering were drinking as well. When Stewart and Lambert came back with the screwdriver, they were not met with a great deal of enthusiasm by anyone. There was an altercation with his uncle, and then the threats came. What makes the story even more chilling is that the police were already at the scene. They had been called after Stewart initially left because there was an ongoing disturbance. So when he returned, he was not walking into a quiet street. He was walking into a scene where officers were present, and he still chose to pull out the screwdriver and make threats. He then ran off, but he did not get far. He was arrested, and in the chaos and anger of the moment, he spat in the face of a police officer.
In court, the human complexity behind the crime began to emerge. Solicitor Alan Davie, defending Stewart, explained that Stewart had been going through a fairly difficult time in his life. Like many people who struggle to cope, he had turned to drink and drugs as a way of trying to deal with his problems. That coping mechanism, if it can even be called that, clearly had a serious impact on his ability to regulate his emotions. Davie put it plainly: Stewart was not at the funeral because he was in custody, and he was slightly upset about missing it. That detail matters. It suggests a man who was carrying guilt and grief, even if he could not process it in a healthy way. He had a drink. He came into contact with the co-accused. Drugs were taken before they attended the wake. By the time he got there, his emotional barriers were already fragile, and when he lost money, something inside him snapped. Davie described him as “something of a Jekyll and Hyde character,” which paints a picture of a man who can be one way when calm and entirely different when under the influence. It is not an excuse, but it is an explanation. It shows how addiction and unresolved pain can twist a person into someone their own family no longer recognises. Stewart made the active decision to arm himself before heading back, and he was fully aware, the court heard, of how seriously these matters would be treated. Yet in that moment, reason was drowned out by rage, grief, intoxication, and probably a desperate need to feel in control.
But this story is not just about James Stewart. It is also about the people he terrorised. The wake was for his grandmother. The people in that room had come together to honour her life and to comfort one another in their loss. Instead, they were threatened with violence by a member of their own family. Imagine the emotional whiplash of that experience. One moment you are sharing memories of a woman you loved, perhaps crying, perhaps laughing at an old story. The next moment, someone you raised, or watched grow up, is holding a screwdriver and saying he is going to cut you open. That kind of fear leaves a mark. It takes the last goodbye to a beloved grandmother and taints it with shock and panic. For the uncle who was directly threatened, the betrayal may feel even deeper. In many families, uncles and nephews have complicated but loving relationships, and to have that bond shattered by a weapon and a threat is something that cannot be undone. The fact that the police were already present adds another layer of tragedy. It means the family had already seen the situation escalate enough to call for help. They had already tried to protect themselves. And still, Stewart came back with violence in his hands and on his lips. His grandmother’s wake, a sacred moment of remembrance, became a crime scene. That is not something any family should have to carry.
The legal consequences were serious, as they should have been. Stewart admitted a series of offences, including possession of drugs, alongside the threatening behaviour and the assault on the police officer. Sheriff Andrew Berry sentenced him to 15 months in prison, backdating the sentence to April 17, which means he was given credit for the time he had already spent in custody. The sheriff also placed him under 12 months of supervision after his release. That supervision is important. It suggests that the court understood that locking Stewart away is only part of the solution. If he is released without support, without addressing the addiction and emotional volatility that made him capable of this behaviour, the cycle may simply repeat itself. The sentence is punishment, but the supervision is a chance. It is a recognition that Stewart is not just a criminal. He is also a young man who has lost his way, who missed his grandmother’s funeral because he was in jail, who used drugs to dull his pain, and who exploded in a way that hurt the people he should love the most. Spitting at a police officer is its own kind of betrayal, an assault not just on the person but on the role they play in protecting the public. It shows how far Stewart had fallen in that moment, how little regard he had for anything or anyone. But the court’s decision to add supervision suggests that there is still hope, however faint, that he might be able to rebuild his life.
At its core, this story is a sad and uncomfortable reminder of what happens when grief, addiction, and unresolved trauma collide. It is easy to read a headline and see only a violent man causing trouble at a funeral. But the fuller picture is more human, and more heartbreaking. James Stewart was a grandson who could not say goodbye to his grandmother in the way he should have. He was a young man who had already been in trouble with the law, who was struggling with drink and drugs, and who was overwhelmed by emotions he did not know how to handle. None of that excuses his actions. The people at that wake deserved to be safe, and his uncle deserved better than to be threatened with a screwdriver at his own mother’s or grandmother’s remembrance. The police officer deserved not to be spat on. But understanding the context does not mean excusing the crime. It means seeing the whole person, the brokenness behind the violence, and the patterns that led him to that moment. For Stewart, the next 15 months in prison will be a hard reckoning. He will have time to think about what he did, about the family he terrified, and about the grandmother whose goodbye he turned into chaos. His relationship with his family may never fully recover. The memory of that wake may never heal. But if the supervision that follows his sentence can help him confront his addiction and learn to manage his emotions, then perhaps his grandmother’s funeral can still become a turning point, not the dark end of his story, but the painful beginning of something more honest. In grief, people sometimes break. The question is whether they can also, eventually, be put back together. That is the quiet hope buried inside this sad, messy, deeply human story.
