A 15-year-old girl has been sentenced to a 12-month referral order for her role in an attack on two police officers in broad daylight in Harrogate.
The incident took place in McDonald’s on Cambridge Road at around 5pm on April 1 this year.
The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to five charges. They included two counts of assaulting police community support officers, causing both actual bodily harm and one of affray, using or threatening violence which led people to fear for their safety, all in the fast food restaurant.
She also admitted a further charge of assaulting a police officer by beating her in Valley Gardens, and one of failing to comply with an exclusion order to leave McDonald’s.
North Yorkshire Youth Court, sitting at Harrogate Justice Centre, heard today that the teenager had been in McDonald’s with friends at about 5pm when there was confusion over whether or not they were banned from the premises. Police officers were called and the girls were found in the upstairs toilets.
In trying to remove them from the building, the officers came under attack.
‘Tussle’
Prosecuting, Melanie Ibbotson said:
“The PCSO goes to grab [another teenage girl] to stop her going back into the toilets and as she does so, there’s a tussle between them both.
“She was trying to grab hold of her, they were pushing and pulling each other, moving towards the top of the stairs, and at this point [the officer] activates her alarm.”
Ms Ibbotson said the 15-year-old then went to help her friend, but in trying to prevent herself being pushed down the stairs, the PCSO grabbed her hair.
The court was shown video evidence of the attack in which the PCSO was punched on the nose, causing heavy bleeding, and her colleague was hit around the face, injuring her jaw and cheek.
The teenagers then left the building and were found in Valley Gardens by other police officers. The 15-year-old spat at a police constable as she was arrested.
The PCSOs were taken to hospital. Neither suffered broken bones, but the PCSO with the injured nose required several months of treatment and could still face an operation to repair the damage inflicted on her in the attack.
The other PCSO had since left the police, the court heard, in part because of the incident in McDonald’s.
Read more:
- Teenagers charged after PCSOs allegedly assaulted in Harrogate McDonald’s
- Two PCSOs seriously injured after attack in Harrogate McDonald’s
Defending, Andrew Tinning of Grahame Stowe Bateson, told the court the teenager had never been in trouble with the police before and the incident had “come out of the blue”.
He said she had been working voluntarily with the youth offending team in the months since, in order to improve her behaviour. He said:
“When she was interviewed, she admitted what she had done, she apologised for her actions, she said she did have an anger issue and she had set out to protect her friend, as she saw it.
“It was a complete over-reaction to the situation she was faced with, but that’s what she did.”
Mother ‘shellshocked’
Her mother told the court she was “shellshocked” when she heard what her daughter had done, adding:
“She made the wrong friends and wrong choices and it just escalated from there.”
Mr Tinning said the girl had since been permanently excluded from school but was about to start at a new school where she could take her GCSEs. She was “academically gifted”, he said, and already had plans for the next steps in her career, supported by her mother.
She now had a part-time job and was at home every evening, the court heard, and had stopped associating with some of her previous friends.
The girls appeared at North Yorkshire Youth Court today
After magistrates retired to consider their sentence, bench chairman Alison Henny told the teenager they had seriously considered a term in a young offenders’ institute because of the severity of the attacks.
However, because of her age and her willingness to improve her behaviour, they had decided to give her a 12-month youth referral order during which she would be given support to make better choices and control her anger.
Mrs Henny said:
“The aim of the youth court is rehabilitation. We believe there’s a real prospect of you being rehabilitated.”
The magistrates ordered her mother to pay compensation of £100 for each of the injured PCSOs.
Meanwhile, a 14-year-old girl, also from Harrogate, has pleaded not guilty to assaulting an emergency worker by beating her, affray, and failing to comply with an exclusion order, at McDonald’s on the same date.
She is due to appear for trial at North Yorkshire Youth Court on November 25.
Another 14-year-old girl has already been dealt with by an out-of-court disposal through the youth outcomes panel in relation to the same incident.
