Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
8yrs for hammer attacker who left woman blind in one eye
Beautician jailed for vicious assault with victim suffering life-long injury
moment of madness. There was a magnet in my pocket. I threw it and put the wee girl’s windows in.
“She came flying out like a psycho. I didn’t realise she had a hammer in her hand at the time.
“It was quite a small hammer and I felt a couple of blows to the head but I didn’t go down.
“She came out of the house and ran at me. I thought it was just going to be a fist fight, so I thought, ‘Right, come on then’.
“She got me first, she had the hammer. I think I had her by the hair or something. I felt the blow to the head but I didn’t know what it was at the time.”
She sustained several blows and can recall being hit “right in the eyeball”, above her eyebrow and along the side of her head.
The altercation ended when the injured woman’s then boyfriend, who had been drinking and taking cocaine with Goldring, intervened. While the injured woman was taken to hospital, Golding was arrested.
When she gave evidence at the trial, the defendant said she used the hammer in self defence during a “frenzied attack” by a “crazy girl”. Claiming she had the hammer in her hand as she was fixing a skirting board, Goldring told the jury going out on to the street after her window was smashed was “human nature” but “the worst decision I ever made”.
Goldring admitted striking several blows and later told police: “I wish I hadn’t done that to her. I wish I could swap places with her. I’m sorry.”
During yesterday’s sentencing, a barrister for Goldring said the incident was not pre-meditated, but rather it was “someone who snapped”.
He said she had displayed remorse for causing the other woman’s injuries and spoke of Goldring’s unstable and traumatic childhood, “a host of physical and mental issues” and a “long history of alcohol and drug abuse”.