Former pupil planned gun revenge

A former pupil took a gun into a school classroom to shoot a teacher who he claimed had sexually abused him years earlier, a court has heard.

The 40-year-old told the High Court in Edinburgh that he had intended to kill Matthew George, 56, who is an art teacher at Kerelaw School in Ayrshire.

He said he changed his mind after seeing the class was full of children.

Mr George denies attacking the man, who cannot be named, and forcing him to perform a sex act in 1979 or 1980.

The man told how he was sent to the school for some of Scotland's most vulnerable children in his teens, after persistent truanting.

He said he had been playing in the grounds of the school with a friend and they had climbed into a classroom through an open window.

He claimed that once in the room he had seen Mr George in a cupboard with another man.

According to the former pupil, the art teacher had then forced him to perform a sex act.

The 40-year-old had been interviewed by the police in 1997 during an investigation into the Ayrshire school.

The man said he felt "betrayed" after nothing seemed to have come of the investigation.

He insisted that on the day of the incident he had a gun with him and he had been watching the school all day through field glasses.

"I was going to kill him. Back then I had the mind of a cold-blooded killer but all that is gone now," he said.

"I walked into the same classroom I was abused in. I seen the kids. There was no way I was going to do anything in a class full of kids.

"I was thinking of the effect it would have on the other kids."

The man denied that he was making up his story of alleged abuse as he went along.

Mr George, from Largs, denies charges of physical cruelty and sex abuse dating back to 1975.

The trial continues.