Harrogate girl, 14, to be electronically tagged after latest assault

A 14-year-old Harrogate girl is to be electronically monitored after being found guilty of another assault.

The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to beating a female when she appeared before North Yorkshire Youth Court in Harrogate on Friday.

She was given a three-month curfew to stay at a named address between 8pm and 7am daily until May 16. The court ruled the curfew was to be electronically monitored.

Magistrates also ordered her not to contact two named individuals and to avoid a particular street, as well as given a £100 fine.

The youth rehabilitation order replaced a previous order issued by magistrates to the same girl on January 27 this year for four counts of assault, one of which was on a police officer, and two counts of arson.

The arson attacks involved setting fire to commercial-sized bins belonging to Primark on Oxford Street in Harrogate and Harrogate Borough Council on Oxford Place in Harrogate on May 23 and May 26 last year respectively.

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Girl, 15, sentenced over police attack in Harrogate McDonald’s

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.

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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.

Harrogate Magistrates Court, Victoria Avenue.

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.

Gang of girls admits causing actual bodily harm in Harrogate

Four teenage girls have pleaded guilty to causing actual bodily harm to a female in Harrogate.

The girls, who cannot be named for legal reasons, are between 14 and 17 years old.

They admitted jointly assaulting the victim on August 15 last year in Belmont Park, Starbeck.

Three of the girls are from Harrogate; another is from Blackpool.

They pleaded guilty when the cases were heard at North Yorkshire Youth Court, sitting in Harrogate, on Friday.

The girls were ordered to £200 compensation each and referred to youth offender panels for 12 months.

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Harrogate girl, 13, charged with drunken assault on police

A 13-year-old girl from Harrogate has been charged with assaulting three police officers.

The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is also accused of being drunk and disorderly on the same day.

North Yorkshire Youth Court, sitting in Harrogate, heard on Friday that the teenager assaulted a police constable and a police community support officer in Ripon Market Place, where the girl was said to be drunk, on March 24.

She is also charged with assaulting another police constable twice on the same day at Harrogate police station on Beckwith Head Road.

In a separate case also heard on Friday, the same girl was accused of using threatening behaviour against a male in Harrogate’s Victoria Shopping Centre on April 3 this year.

Both cases were adjourned until June 26.

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