GLASGOW, Scotland, June 21 (UPI) -- A Scottish war hero was convicted Friday of a racist killing 14 years ago.
Michael Ross, 29, who served with the legendary Black Watch Regiment, tried to flee from a courtroom in Glasgow immediately after the jury returned its verdict, The Independent reported. He was captured just outside.
The jury found that Ross, at the age of 15, killed a Bangladeshi waiter in the Orkneys. Shamsuddin Mahmood, 26, was gunned down in front of diners at the Mumtaz in Kirkwall because of his race, prosecutors said.
The killing was the first in a quarter century in the island group north of Scotland, the report said.
During the trial, jurors heard that the teenage Ross was obsessed by the Nazis and told another Army cadet that "blacks should be shot."
"This was a callous murder of an innocent young man who was well known and liked within the town," Andrew Laing, the procurator fiscal for the Highlands and Islands told jurors.
By the time of his arrest in 2005, Ross was an Army sniper who helped save other soldiers when his armored vehicle struck a roadside bomb in I2004. When a black soldier in his unit died, he cried.
