Landscape gardener William McPhee was ordered to do 160 hours of unpaid work as a direct alternative to a custodial sentence.
14:41, 07 Oct 2025Updated 14:45, 07 Oct 2025
William McPhee
A chainsaw wielding workman who threatened to “chop up” a man who complained about his parking has escaped a prison sentence.
Landscape gardener William McPhee was ordered to do 160 hours of unpaid work as a direct alternative to a custodial sentence.
McPhee, 41, from Broxburn, West Lothian, was found guilty of behaving in a threatening or abusive manner by threatening to kill Kyle Manifield while brandishing an operating chainsaw towards him.
A jury heard that the accused started up the noisy petrol-driven power tool and revved it angrily above his head as he walked towards Mr Manifield shouting threats, a court heard.
Mr Manifield had been called to the scene by his anxious partner Rachel Saunders who had been forced to take her one-year-old child onto a busy road because McPhee’s van was blocking the footpath.
When she complained to the workmen, who was cutting up logs in her elderly neighbour’s garden in Polbeth, West Lothian, he swore at her.
Mr Manifield, 36, told a jury at Livingston Sheriff Court that when he returned a missed call from his partner at lunchtime she was “distressed and rather upset”.
Livingston Sheriff Court(Image: Crawford Brown)
He said: “From the phone call with Rachel my understanding was they were quite abusive and trying to intimidate her. She said they were shouting and swearing at her. I was rather angry at the way that they spoke to my partner. I felt they were trying to intimidate her.
“I asked them who they thought they were talking to a young girl that way and said something along the lines of: Why don’t they try talking to myself like that?
“After a few moments of words backward and forward he (the accused) started his chainsaw and came running round the house.
“As he was coming round he was revving the chainsaw. He was shouting that he was going to f***ing kill me and he was going to chop me up. I was backing away towards the road. (I was feeling) quite threatened obviously.
“Rachel was upstairs leaning out of the bedroom window. She was screaming out the window trying to get me back into the house telling me that he’s got a chainsaw.”
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The jury was shown CCTV footage of the incident at Chapelton Avenue, Polbeth, on 27 June 2023 which included the sound of the chain saw being revved.
“Once the chainsaw started up and I was getting told I was going to get killed I felt threatened at that point,” Mr Manifield said.
Passing sentence, Sheriff Valerie Mays told the father-of -four: “You were convicted by the jury of a relatively serious offence.
“You do have a conviction for a violent offence with a domestic aggravation but you are not a man with a significant history of violent offending. I accept that this seems to be out of character for you and you seem to live a generally pro social life and are hard working.”
She imposed a community payback order requiring McPhee to carry out 160 hours of unpaid work within 15 months.
She warned him the sentence was a direct alternative to prison and warned that if he failed to comply with the order he could be brought back to court and given another sentence, including a custodial sentence.
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