Man jailed for leaving girl to die on Edinburgh's Calton Hill - BBC News
Mhari O'Neill is thought to have died from hypothermia and intoxication after being abandoned in Edinburgh.
Mhari O'Neill's body was discovered on Edinburgh's Calton Hill in December 2018

A man who caused the death of an underage girl by buying her alcohol and abandoning her on a winter's night has been jailed for more than three years.

When Ewan Fulton left 15-year-old Mhari O'Neill, she was not wearing a jacket and was too drunk to walk.

A dog walker found her body on Edinburgh's Calton Hill the next morning. on 7 December 2018.

Fulton, who was 18, later told a friend: "That girl has a family and if I had stayed she would be alive."

Pathologists have decided the probable cause of the teenager's death was hypothermia.

Ewan Fulton was aged 18 at the time of Mhari's death

Sentencing Fulton to three years and two months at the High Court in Edinburgh, judge Norman McFadyen said he had no justification for leaving Mhari.

"You were clearly thinking but thinking about yourself," he said. "The decent thing would have been to stay with her and seek help.

"Even an anonymous 999 call would have secured the help that she needed...you panicked and left her."

The court heard that Fulton befriended Mhari through the social media site Yubo.

He bought a one litre bottle of vodka for them to share after he travelled to Edinburgh from Livingston to meet her.

Fulton said there was heavy petting and admitted a charge of sexual activity with a child. He had bitten the teenager's breasts and compressed her neck.

They had shared the vodka equally, which Fulton said left Mhari "obviously drunk. It was like she had lost all motor skills, she was too drunk to do anything."

Fulton said she kept falling off the bench and could not walk.

He claimed he needed to get the last train home and told her he was leaving, but did not get a response as she was "unable to speak."

The next day he sent her texts stating "Are you alive?" In a message to a friend he wrote "I had no choice but to leave what was I supposed to do."

Fulton pleaded guilty last month to culpable homicide. He admitted taking part in sexual activity with the schoolgirl, culpably and recklessly endangering her health and life, and exposing her to risk of injury and death.

The culpable homicide charge said Fulton left her without the means to contact anyone, had failed to get help for her, and behaved with "utter disregard" for the consequences of his actions.

The court heard that Fulton later attempted suicide.

His defence counsel Shelagh McColl QC said he would have to live with what had happened for the rest of his life: "He was a young man who would have been under the influence of alcohol himself and he's a young man who has made a bad decision with catastrophic consequences," she said.

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