James Alberto Lopes Veloso armed himself with the scissors and ran after the girl when an argument broke out between the pair on 10 March.
The Royal Court heard yesterday that the 20-year-old later put the scissors down, but followed the girl into the garden and pulled out a BB gun, before shooting her on the chin from close range.
When the police arrived at the property, Veloso jumped over a wall and ran into his grandmother’s house, where he hid until officers found him and made an arrest.
During interview, Veloso, who suffers from ADHD, denied shooting the girl and made several threats, calling his victim and some of the witnesses ‘rats’ and ‘scumbags’.
Crown Advocate Conrad Yates, prosecuting, read a number of witness statements to the court, with one man describing how Veloso held the scissors ‘like you’d hold a knife’ and another recalling the girl’s screams.
In a separate account, a witness said: ‘I was in fear of James as I could tell by his face that he was angry. It was his body language and the way he ran.
‘I was scared for girl as he was running towards her, but I didn’t know what would happen next. I thought he might take his anger out on us.’
Advocate Yates added that the girl was lucky to escape without injury and that a non-custodial sentence could not be justified.
Advocate Catriona Fogarty, defending, said that her client, who pleaded guilty to affray, had stopped taking his ADHD medication before the incident because it made him ‘feel only half alive’ and that he had ‘flipped’ during the argument.
She added that Veloso did not have a history of similar offending and that he had never been put on probation or given community service.
Commissioner Sir Michael Birt said that the incident must have been a very frightening experience for the victim and the witnesses, but that he accepted the crime was not as serious as other affray offences.
‘You chased after her holding scissors and then you shot her on the chin with a BB gun, which unsurprisingly caused her to cry,’ he said. ‘We accept that despite the use of scissors and the BB gun, it was not the most serious of cases of affray.’
Sir Michael said that the court felt that although the defendant had a high risk of reconviction, it was in the best interest of all parties to impose a probation order to help him with his problems.
Veloso was sentenced to 180 hours’ community service and was placed on probation for a year.
Jurats Charles Blampied and Peter Morgan were sitting on the case.
