A contractor has admitted spitting at a paramedic and police officer before subjecting nurses to a “non-stop tirade of filth and abuse”.

Stephen Whitehead yesterday admitted assaulting, obstructing or hindering a paramedic and assaulting a police officer on South Road, Lerwick in the early hours of Friday.

The 32-year-old also admitted breaching the peace at Gilbert Bain Hospital by shouting, swearing and uttering threats.

Fiscal Duncan Mackenzie told Lerwick Sheriff Court that Whitehead had first come to the police’s attention at about 3.30am on Friday after staff at the Lerwick Hotel found him lying beside a very exit “very drunk indeed”.

He had urinated over himself and was mumbling incoherently, and police called an ambulance.

By the time it arrived Whitehead had come round from his “drunken stupor” and his behaviour “deteriorated quite dramatically”, Mr Mackenzie said.

The court heard he spat at – and narrowly missed – a female paramedic, before doing the same to a police officer.

Once at hospital, Whitehead, of Moffatt Road, Owton Manor, Hartlepool, threatened to throw a bottle filled with his own urine over a nurse.

The fiscal said that an A&E department would invariably contain people there in a “very dire situation” and “the last thing they should have to contend with is disgusting behaviour like that”.

Defence agent Richard Donaldson said his client had no recollection of the events, but was “absolutely disgusted” by his own actions.

Whitehead, who is in Shetland working as a contractor for a small local construction firm, had gone out drinking with colleagues after work on Thursday.

Mr Donaldson said his client did not drink very often due to a bowel condition, and had become so drunk because he simply wasn’t used to alcohol.

He said there was a likelihood that Whitehead would lose his job, prompting Sheriff Philip Mann to defer sentence for the preparation of background reports.

Sheriff Mann said they were “serious charges” that could not be tolerated or condoned. Whitehead will return to court on June 8.