A NOTORIOUS Johnstone thug has been cleared of claims he attacked a man with a machete.

Raymond “Raymie” Docherty was said to have repeatedly hacked David “Mick” Kennedy with the huge bladed weapon in a close in Johnstone’s High Street.

He denied carrying out the attack on June 22 this year, and went on trial over the charge at Paisley Sheriff Court.

The court heard Docherty was spotted with a machete in the close moments before Kennedy was seen leaving the building “covered in blood”. 

But Docherty insisted he had done nothing wrong – and only fought with Kennedy, 36, after being struck by his alleged victim. 

Giving evidence in his own defence Docherty, 24, said he had been speaking to a 17-year-old girl, who can’t be named for legal reasons, after drinking Buckfast and smoking cannabis on the day in question.

He said: “I think [Kennedy] thought I was trying to fire into her. He said, ‘You want to go for it?’I said, ‘No, Mick – you’re my pal, man’. He wasn’t my pal but I said that just to try and stop it.

“Mick slapped us. The two of us started fighting. We were punching each other. 

“I punched him and I hurt my hand, then he speared me up the stairs.”
Docherty also said he was being kicked by an unknown number of unidentified others during the fight, as was Kennedy.

“I just felt kicks coming from all ways. 

“It was other people. I just felt all the blood coming over me.

“I was pure hot with all the blood.”

After four days of evidence, a jury took just nine minutes to find the single charge against Docherty not proven.

Docherty was free from prison at the time of the alleged attack after being released early after being sentenced for assault last year. 

Last June he was jailed for two-and-a-half years for an attack with a screwdriver on John Mochan at a property in Ferguson Street, Johnstone, on February 8, 2017. 

He punched Mochan on the head and then rained blows at his body with the screwdriver before robbing him of a mobile phone, a charger and a Bluetooth speaker.

Docherty denied the attack but a jury convicted him of the charge.

In 2012, he was also locked up for a savage assault in Johnstone which saw him jump off a wall to stamp on a young woman’s head. 

He was caged for the attack and was given time behind bars for the assault and a number of others.

Despite being told he would spend 35 months in Polmont Young Offenders’ Institute, Docherty was released early and returned to his home town.

Docherty, who formerly lived in Paisley’s Killoch Avenue and Abercorn Street, jumped on Nikki McDonagh’s head in August 2011 after she smacked him in the mouth with a bottle after he tried to stop a fight between her, another woman, and his sister, Claire Docherty.

Claire and Raymond had been drinking with McDonagh and Nicole Haughie in Paisley on the day in question before getting a taxi to Johnstone’s Lilybank Wynd, where his mum lived. 

Raymond intervened after Haughie started to fight with his sister, repeatedly punching and kicking her on the head and body.