Gull taken on a bus and walked on lead

Woman appeared in court after causing gull serious injury

A woman who took an injured gull for a walk on a dog lead ended up causing the creature fatal damage. Anna Marie Marshall, 44, found the herring gull in Scarborough and caught a bus to York with it.

After alighting from the bus, she took it for a walk through the city centre.

Police found her and the leashed bird in Parliament Street, where Marshall started berating the officers, prosecutor Neil Holdsworth told York Magistrates’ Court.

She refused to hand the bird over and at some point during the chaos, she caused the gull more injury.

Though it’s not entirely clear how Marshall harmed the bird, it was put to the court that she may have leaned on it.

Police finally managed to free the gull from her grasp and took it to a vet where it was treated for a broken wing.

Sadly its injuries were too severe and it had to be put down.

Marshall was arrested at the scene on June 28 and charged with intentionally injuring the gull, taking a wild bird in Scarborough and using threatening words or behaviour towards officers.

She was supposed to have been dealt with last Friday but although she turned up at court, she took left before her case was called. She was seen leaving the building clutching two cans of Guinness.

The court issued a warrant for her arrest and she was subsequently brought back into custody and remanded in jail.

Marshall spent the weekend in the cells and finally appeared in the dock on Monday, wearing a brown hoodie,

and admitted all three offences and another of failing to surrender to custody.

Mr Holdsworth said: “Miss Marshall admitted to police that she had brought the gull from Scarborough on a bus.

“She told the officer that she found the bird and rescued it.

“She was walking the gull on a lead.

“She was asked to hand it to police but refused.

“She called police ‘murderers’ and said, ‘I would rather kill it than let you take it. I would rather wring its neck’.”

Mr Holdsworth said Marshall, of no fixed address, had a long criminal record mainly for minor drunk-and-disorderly incidents. Stephen Munro, for Marshall, said his troubled client initially took the bird as a “pet”, adding: “She found the animal and wanted to care for it, and nurse it back to health.”

He said that according to Marshall, she didn’t deliberately injure the bird but did so accidentally as she was trying to get up off the floor, “leaning” on the stricken animal.

He said Marshall led a “chaotic and itinerant” life and had mental-health problems. “She’s been on the streets for some 10 years – this has obviously taken its toll upon her,” he added.

District judge Adrian Lower said Marshall’s “bizarre decision, albeit perhaps originally well-minded, to take into your care a herring gull from Scarborough”, was pure “folly”.

He added: “When police tried to encourage you to see sense, you became abusive with them to the point that you had to be arrested.”

Marshall was given a 12-month community order and banned from caring for, or possessing, a wild animal during that period.

She was also ordered to pay an £85 statutory surcharge and £85 costs.

‘She wanted to care for it and nurse it back to health’ Mr Holdsworth