Raigmore Hospital bomb hoax man facing jail term

A man who caused an evacuation of nearly 30 patients from three wards at Raigmore Hospital by making a hoax bomb threat because he felt he wasn’t getting the proper treatment had previous convictions under the Telecommunications Act it has emerged.

A jury at Inverness yesterday (Monday) took less than 40 minutes after a two day trial to find Gareth Benbow guilty of making the hoax call on August 24 last year, and over and eight month period in 2013 behaving in a threatening or abusive manner towards staff trying to treat him at the hospital.

After the verdict was announced Depute Fiscal told Sheriff Margaret Neilson: "The jury may be interested to know Benbow has six previous convictions for breach of the peace, three convictions for criminal damage and four for misuse of the telephone system."

The jury heard in evidence Benbow, (33), from Inverness, was frustrated because medics wouldn’t give him morphine on an intravenous drip at his home to provide pain relief for a knee problem.

The trial at Inverness heard Benbow had been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit at Raigmore Hospital 19 times between January and August of last year.

Consultant anaesthetist Dr Alexander Hunter told the court he and other staff members had been threatened and felt intimidated by Benbow who had deliberately overdosed on drugs including morphine which he had been prescribed for his knee.

The doctor told the jury he did not believe the severity of Benbow’s complaint justified what he was asking for.

"We give the treatment patients need not what they want," he said.

"There was a pattern in that he would come in and require ventilation and then would wake several hours later."

Dr Hunter said Benbow would be comatose when he was admitted after his overdose and he required ventilation to help him breathe.

When he came round he became abusive upsetting visitors patients and staff.

The phone call on the afternoon of Saturday, August 24 led to the evacuation of eight critically ill patients from the high dependency ICU.

Another nine patients were evacuated from the oncology ward on the floor above ICU. The trial heard one of these patients was dying from cancer.

Ten children were evacuated from the children’s ward on the floor below ICU.

A police armed response team was deployed and police dog handlers carried out a search.

Inspector Donald Peterkin, (47), told the court a specialist search team carried out a search of ICU.

Nothing was found and the jury heard an hour after the evacuation patients, many still connected to machines and monitors, were readmitted to their wards.

One senior manager William McLeman said the whole operation of the hospital was impacted.

One patient who had begun the anaesthesia process had to have their operation halted.

Visitors were not allowed into the building and those visiting sick relatives were asked to leave.

Senior Staff Nurse Mary-Helen Hendry, (57), who took the call warning of a bomb in the unit said she was not a voice expert but she thought the voice was that of Benbow.

She described how the call came in about 4.15pm and the caller said :’You have 20 minutes to evacuate the ward. There is a bomb about to go off.’

"It was a very frightening moment," said Mrs Hendry.

Describing the voice she told the fiscal. "It was an English male voice, quite softly spoken. Possibly a west country voice. It was similar to Mr Benbow’s voice which I had heard before."

Solicitor for Benbow, Duncan Henderson, suggested she might be mistaken and she could not be definite it was his voice.

"I believed the voice immediately to be that of Benbow who I had heard many times before," she replied.

She described how one patient evacuated from ICU was on life on life support and kidney dialysis. That patient had to be evacuated give breath through a manual bag.

"Evacuating an intensive care ward is not something that can be undertaken lightly."

Staff Nurse John Ritchie, (54), said he had been involved in caring for Benbow about six times. He said Benbow would come in and would have to be ventilated to help him breathe and to get the drugs he had taken out of his system.

"He was verbally aggressive to everybody and anybody, intimidating using vulgar language threatening saying things like ‘I’ll get you for negligence. You’re not giving me my morphine’."

"I told him to show some dignity and respect to a woman who was going to die within the next few hours. He replied: ‘ I don’t give a f...’."

Sheriff Neilson heard Benbow had spent 110 days on remand after the incident and was released on December 20.

Mr Henderson asked for him to be given bail until he is sentenced.

But Benbow, who now faces a jail sentence was remanded in custody.

Deferring sentence until March 31 for criminal justice social work reports Sheriff Neilson told him: "In the light of the very serious nature of the charge of which you have been convicted I’ll revoke bail and you will be remanded in custody."

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