A MAN who battered a rival with a child's pink push-along scooter to the danger of his victim's life has been told to expect a substantial jail term when he appears for sentencing next month.

Labourer Daniel Beattie, 29, left his victim in a pool of blood, lapsing in and out of consciousness with a collapsed lung, following the assault.

The complainer also received two broken fingers, two broken ribs, cuts on his head, and bruising all over his body, after being hit repeatedly with the folded-up heavy steel toy.

Last week Stirling Sheriff Court heard that Beattie, at the head of a gang of up to eight unidentified males referred to in court as "The Young Team", shouted, screamed and jumped a fence to attack his victim as he got out of his former girlfriend's car outside her Ash Grove home in Alloa.

As she struggled to find her house keys, the complainer attempted to run from the gang, but tripped and fell.

Beattie, who had earlier made threats of violence towards the male, caught up with him as he tried to struggle back to his feet.

The complainer told a jury he "kind of suspected" that Beattie and his ex, had been in a relationship.

He said: "Daniel put me in a headlock was punching me while somebody else got the scooter and hit me all over my ribs and down my body with it.

"Daniel was saying: 'You're getting it' and the others were kicking and punching me."

He said Beattie then released him from the headlock and began hitting him on the head with the scooter himself, again and again, "with full force".

He said: "I was dazed... I was kind of getting knocked out with every blow. I remember being knocked out three times and coming round and he was still hitting me to my head and my side as well.

"He was raining down on me with the scooter."

The complainer said his former partner was trying to stop the assault and the other males had backed off.

The court heard that someone shouted to Beattie: "You're going to kill him", but he carried on.

Eventually the police arrived, called by a neighbour who was woken by the noise of the assault in the early hours of April 8 last year, and Beattie fled.

The victim, from Alva, spent several days in hospital after surgery to insert a drain and re-inflate his collapsed left lung, and had two operations on his middle finger, which he still cannot straighten properly.

During the four-day trial at Stirling Sheriff Court, prosecutor Kyrsten Buist said Beattie had "adapted" the child's scooter into a weapon.

She said: "He started this assault, and he continued this assault on Mr Johnston while he lay motionless on the ground, even after the others desisted."

Jurors took just an hour and a half to find Beattie, of Tillicoultry, guilty of assault to severe injury and the danger of life. The verdict was by majority.

Beattie had denied the offence, but did not give evidence.

On the public benches, the female witness burst into tears when the verdict was announced.

Sheriff Wyllie Robertson deferred sentence until March 8 and remanded Beattie in custody.

He said: "A significant custodial sentence is inevitable, but what I am considering thereafter is some post-release supervision, and for that I will need a report."

Beattie smiled at the public benches as he was led, handcuffed to a security guard, to the cells.