Battered with a knuckle duster by total stranger
Mum blasts ‘too short’ 9 mnths’ jail
THESE are the horrific injuries suffered by a woman who was attacked by a stranger using a knuckle-duster.
Belinda Price was visiting the home of her son’s friend when Nicky Sandwell, 26, forced his way in and assaulted the owner. The drunken lout then turned his attentions to the mum of two and, in one devastating blow, shattered the bones in her face, nose and eye socket. Surgeons had to insert four metal plates and Belinda, 53, is now partially sighted. She has hit out the “unfair” system, which may mean Sandwell is freed in nine months. Make-up artist Belinda said: “It seems all in favour of the perpetrator. How can it be right that you can nearly take someone’s life away and get a sentence which means you will be out on the streets in nine months’ time?
“It’s just not long enough and seems so unfair.”
Belinda had visited the home of Francis Casey, a close friend of her 24-year-old son, last August when Sandwell and accomplice Charlie Temple, 25, who had fallen out with Francis, burst in.
They punched Francis’s dad Patrick, 57, unconscious. Sandwell attacked Belinda as she stood in the kitchen and Temple punched Francis in the face.
At St Albans crown court, Herts, Sandwell was jailed for 18 months and Temple for 27.
Belinda, of Welwyn Garden City, is awaiting further surgery. She said of the attack: “It shatters your trust in people.”