A woman who wrapped a cable around a man’s neck while attacking him after a Halloween house party in Kendal has been given a suspended prison sentence.
Emma Barnes, 28, was one of several people present at the Natland Road address on October 31 into the early hours of the following morning.
After others went to bed or left, Barnes and the man remained downstairs, drinking and talking until around 5am. As the pair discussed relationships, the man — starting his third bottle of wine — made comments that Barnes perceived to be inappropriate.
She initially spoke of leaving but returned and offered to make the man some toast. As he was eating that, Barnes “punched him to the mouth”, Carlisle Crown Court heard today.
Barnes struck the man again, causing him to fall, and was seen by others to “kick him to the face”, part of that being captured on video footage filmed by another occupant. In between, Barnes put a cord around the neck of the man. He suffered cuts to his face, a bloody lip and marks around his neck.
Barnes was interviewed several weeks later. “She said he had made lewd comments to her, had made advances to her and assaulted her,” said prosecutor Huw Edwards. “She accepted that she hit him and used a cable to twist around his neck, and said that she had done so in self-defence. She denied kicking him to the head at any point.”
Barnes, of Rinkfield, Kendal, admitted affray. Judge Simon Medland QC suspended an eight-month prison sentence for two years and ordered her to complete 100 hours’ unpaid work and a rehabilitation requirement.
The incident had been, said the judge, a “bad business”, and “drunken violence which was entirely unacceptable”.
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