Woman gets prison for vicious attack

An Edmonton woman who pummeled, scalded and stabbed a friend with weapons from his kitchen after he refused to lend her money has been sentenced to three years and eight months in prison.

Delilah Sophia Blair, 27, thanked the judge after she was sentenced in a provincial courtroom Wednesday morning after earlier pleading guilty to aggravated assault for the attack on her friend John Ledden.

The two of them had met a week before and Blair had slept on his couch a couple times before she dropped by while Ledden was making dinner on Sept. 26, 2012.

Blair arrived drunk at Ledden’s northeast Edmonton apartment and asked to borrow money. He refused and asked her to leave.

Blair “became extremely angry and, quote, freaked out,” Crown prosecutor Breena Smith previously told court.

Blair struck Ledden in the head with a castiron frying pan and then grabbed a pot of boiling water from the stove and poured it over his head.

While Ledden was on the floor, she kicked him in the head, grabbed a large kitchen knife and stabbed and slashed at him. Still holding the knife, Blair left the home.

Leaden made it to a neighbour’s apartment for help. Blair hid in another neighbouring apartment that she entered through a window she had smashed with a fire extinguisher a week before. The apartment’s tenant found her when he returned home.

Blair told police that she was “drunk and angry and that she freaked out and doesn’t remember what happened,” Smith said.

Court heard that Blair had a “chaotic upbringing” and has had substance abuse issues since her teens.