Scarred and bloodied, young dancer who was glassed by a stranger as she sat in her car
THESE are the horrific injuries inflicted on a young dancer who has been left ‘unable to smile’ after a stranger smashed down her window with a bottle as she sat in her car while the road was blocked.
Chloe Knapton, 21, suffered serious wounds when the glass embedded in her neck during the unprovoked attack.
Despite bleeding profusely, she managed to drive the short distance home. But her ordeal was made worse by a delay of more than an hour before an ambulance arrived, her mother said.
Last Thursday night Miss Knapton was driving home from a night out behind her 21-year-old friend, who was driving another car. At 11.45pm the friend stopped in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, because there was a blue bicycle lying in the road. She got out to move the bike and a man armed with a bottle shouted at her. He then walked up to Miss Knapton’s car and used the bottle to smash the driver’s window.
Miss Knapton suffered deep cuts to her shoulder and neck, as well as serious cuts to her face. One piece of glass was embedded less than an inch from her jugular vein, her mother said.
She underwent three lots of surgery at Leeds General Infirmary and has been left temporarily unable to smile, eat or
‘Pools of blood on the pavement’
talk properly. It is not known if the wounds resulted only from the window being smashed or also from the bottle.
‘She was so brave. There were pools of blood on the pavement,’ her mother Allyson Knapton, 45, said. ‘She had to have stitches on both sides of her lips, inside and out, and round her nose. She needs dental treatment because one of her teeth has broken off.’
Miss Knapton is recovering at home in Holmfirth. The dance teacher, who runs a branch of the KT Dance Academy, has received hundreds of messages of support from friends and colleagues.
Police said the incident was ‘apparently motiveless’ and could have been fatal. Andrew Shires, 37, of Holmfirth, has been charged with assault occasioning grievous bodily harm. He was remanded in custody and is due at Leeds Crown Court next month.
Yorkshire Ambulance Service said: ‘We are sorry to hear the family are unhappy with the 999 response and ask that they contact us.’