Duo sentenced after assault with stiletto shoe (From Craven Herald)

Duo sentenced after assault with stiletto shoe

11:17am Thursday 12th July 2012 in News

Two people have been given community sentences after being involved in an assault in which a woman was hit with a stiletto heeled shoe.

Danielle Dixon, who was in the brawl which started in Chico’s takeaway in Sackville Street, Skipton, and spread into the street in the early hours of Sunday, November 11, returned to the town’s magistrates’ court last Wednesday for sentencing.

She was found guilty of assault by beating after a two-day trial last month in which the bench heard that she used the shoe in the attack.

In her evidence, she claimed she was the victim of an unprovoked attack.

Craig Docherty, who got involved because he knew 26-year-old Dixon, admitted to using threatening behaviour with intent to cause fear of unlawful violence.

Dixon, a hairdresser and mother of a six-year-old boy of Rombalds Drive, Skipton, was sentenced to a 12-month community order to include six sessions of an alcohol treatment programme and 100 hours of unpaid work. She was told she must pay £450 in costs and £80 in compensation.

Magistrates were told that Dixon attacked Emily Ryder in Chico’s and then assaulted her when Miss Ryder left the takeaway and was in Sackville Street where she claimed to have “blacked out.”

Before sentence, John Mewies, who was representing Dixon, said: “Drink is a mitigating factor making her act in a way she would not do normally. She is fearful of repercussions and fearful of going out. She has not been out since. This has been a salutary lesson.”

He also reminded magistrates that she had also been injured in the incident.

Docherty, 26, of Pinhaw Road, Skipton, was sentenced to a 12-month community order with 60 hours’ unpaid work and told to pay £350 in costs and £60 compensation.

He said he believed he and the other man involved were victims of the “scrap” between the two women. “I was caught in the middle of something I should not have got involved in. In future I will walk away,” he said.