To continue reading this article, subscribe to the Stray Ferret for as little as £1 a week
Already a subscriber? Log in here.
28
Oct 2022
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.
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.
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
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.
0