January 2019 Lifelong restriction for ‘high-risk’ rapist A rapist whose victim jumped from a fourth-floor flat to stop him killing her has been jailed for a minimum of five years. The 29-year-old woman was attacked in the Glasgow flat on 1 February 2018. She leapt from the fourth floor of the building onto concrete, sustaining “horrific” injuries. David Smith, 32, was sentenced at the High Court in Edinburgh for 14 offences, including rape and attempted murder, against two women. Judge Lord Kinclaven imposed an Order for Lifelong Restriction on Smith. He told him that an experienced psychiatrist who produced a report on him concluded that “by a comfortable margin you have reached the threshold for high risk”. Lord Kinclaven ordered that Smith must serve a minimum term of five years in jail, but told him: “That does not mean that at the end of that five year period you will necessarily be released on licence.” Smith will only be released when parole authorities consider it is no longer necessary for the protection of the public that he continue to be confined in prison. The court heard that the victim who leapt from the flat had been subjected to a three-month campaign of abuse and sexual violence by Smith in the lead up to the final attack on her. Smith flew into a rage because he believed a stranger had smiled at her during a trip to Glasgow’s west end. The woman said: “He also threatened to kidnap my daughter.” He repeatedly threatened to kill her, holding a pair of hedge cutters to her face and yelling: “I’ll kill you.” Locked bathroom
He chased her through the flat before she took refuge in a bathroom. Smith then plunged a blade through the closed door narrowly missing the woman. The court heard that the woman thought he was really going to kill and jumped from the window in an attempt to escape. She suffered six broken ribs, collapsed lungs, a fractured skull, a shattered breast bone and a serious leg injury in the fall. Smith, of Maryhill, in Glasgow, was also found to have subjected a second woman to an ordeal of rape and abuse between 2011 and 2015. He will be on the sex offenders register indefinitely following his sentencing.