Robber struck ‘because victim reported her the day before’

A woman has been spared jail after robbing her victim in the street.

Sarah Williams, 44, pushed her victim over and stole her cigarettes in Bangor.

She said she had done it because her victim had reported her for criminal damage and she had therefore been kept in custody. Williams later admitted robbery.

Last Thursday a judge at Caernarfon Crown Court gave her an 11 month jail term, suspended for 18 months, for robbery plus one month for breaching bail.

Prosecutor Sarah Badrway said that victim Yvonne Ryan had reported the defendant, of Ty’n Parc, Holyhead, on January 28 this year for causing criminal damage.

She was arrested and the following day she was released on police bail. A condition was not to contact Yvonne Ryan.

Later that day - January 29 - the court heard Williams saw Ms Ryan in a street in Bangor.

Williams went up to her and pushed her.

The prosecutor said that Williams then said: “You put me in custody so I’m taking your fags.”

She said Williams tried to take the cigarettes and Ms Ryan resisted but Williams took them in the end. The incident was captured on CCTV.

Williams initially denied the robbery but later pleaded guilty. On February 2, Williams pleaded guilty to causing criminal damage and was fined.

The court heard that Williams has 22 convictions for 32 offences.

Ember-Jade Wong, defending, said her client had had a “harrowing” childhood.

And she added: “It appears that much of her offending is connected to the consumption of alcohol.

“She knows she is at a crossroads. She knows that this is serious. There are two different paths and the path that she was seemingly about to go along is not one she wants to go along.”

The judge The Recorder Simon Mills told Williams that he accepts that in “her 44 years she has been confronted by many unhappy events to put it mildly”.

The details weren’t read out in court.

She also had an “unhealthy relationship with alcohol” but had been off alcohol for a month.

The judge said that there was only minimal force and the harm was “not identifiable other than stress”.

There is a “realistic argument” that she had reached a watershed in her life.

He decided to suspend her eleven month jail term for robbery for 18 months but gave her a one month consecutive jail term for breaching her bail in approaching Ms Ryan.

He also ordered Williams to do 30 days of rehabilitation activity and to wear an alcohol abstinence monitoring tag for 120 days.

And he warned the defendant if she drinks alcohol in that time an alarm would sound, she would be reported and brought back to court in breach of her suspended sentence, which could be activated and she could go to prison.

He also ordered her to pay a £156 surcharge.