Supervision for street attack
Court hears of“extreme provocation”
A Fallin villager savagely attacked another woman after lingering animosity on social media turned into violence.
Jacqueline Lyon, of Hawthorn Drive, had admitted assaulting Margaret Williams to her severe injury and permanent impairment in Fallin’s Stirling Road on September 23 last year while acting with another.
Thirty-seven-year-old Lyon had grabbed Ms Williams by the hair, repeatedly punched her on the body, kicked her on the head and body and jumped on her right leg.
As a result Ms Williams sustained a broken tibia, fibia and kneecap.
She has had to undergo a number of operations and is due to have a rod inserted in her right leg.
Lyon, however, escaped a jail term last week and received community service and supervision.
Ms Williams told the Observer following sentence: “This has left me disfigured and disabled. I’m disgusted with the justice system.
“I am on medication, have nerve damage and will require another operation. I will have these problems for life.”
Lyon’s agent Fraser McCready told Sheriff William Gilchrist at Stirling Sheriff Court on Wednesday that there had been a history of ill feeling between Lyon and Ms Williams
Lyon had become the mother of twin boys on July 31 last year after a difficult pregnancy, but tragically one of the boys died through cot death.
He added: “Unfortunately whilst some members of the community rallied round and offered support to Ms Lyon, that cannot be said for other members of the community.”
Upsetting comments had been made on social media a few days before the attack, he explained.
A friend of Lyon’s had also seen threatening messages sent through social media directed at a member of the accused’s family.
On September 23 Ms Lyon saw the messages which, said Mr McCready, were clearly abusive.
Ms Williams had said she wished to have a ‘square go’ with Ms Lyon and jumped in her car and drove to the locus, he said.
As previously told to the court, Ms Lyons’ partner William White got involved and jumped on Ms Williams’s leg. Lyon, said Mr McCready, accepted that she was involved, had kicked the complainer, and the plea had been tendered on an art and part (or accessory to the crime) basis.
The court was also told that following the death of the infant, Mr White turned to alcohol and Valium and subsequently died.
Mr McCready added: “Ms Lyon found his body not long after she found the body of her infant son. It was a terrible time.”
Mr McCready pointed out that Lyon had a similar conviction for violence and regretted the situation.
He added, however, that “considerable provocation” had been involved, which the crown had accepted when the plea had been tendered last month.
Lyon had responsibility for the care of her children. She had been on maternity leave from her job and would not be returning to work for some time.
She had been prescribed medication by her GP and was getting support from a cot death organisation.
She has no-one else to look after her children, Mr McCready said, and they would be affected if she received a custodial sentence.
She had suffered great loss and bereavement over the last 12 months which would take some time to heal, said the lawyer and asked the Sheriff to impose a non-custodial sentence.
Sheriff Gilchrist said he accepted there was “considerable, if not extreme provocation” and imposed a community payback order comprising 120 hours’ unpaid work and 12 months’ supervision as an alternative to custody.
She found his body not long after that of her infant son