Woman waved machete in the street after row
A WOMAN waved a machete around in the middle of the road after she ‘lost it’ in a row at home.
Claire Taylor, 46, an unemployed former shop manager, repeatedly stabbed the road and lamp-post during her outburst although no-one was harmed.
Taylor had been living at an address on Moss Vale Road in Stretford with her partner of five years and a lodger when there was an argument at the property on March 22, Manchester Crown Court heard.
The defendant emerged from the house into the garden with a machete in her hand, prosecutor James Preece told the court.
A passing taxi driver saw the defendant with two others in the road ‘swinging the machete around.’ The cabbie saw her stabbing the floor repeatedly with the blade and appeared to be ‘in her own world,’ the court heard.
Taylor’s partner urged her to go inside and she did but not before striking a lamp-post with the machete on the way in.
Police were called after receiving numerous complaints from neighbours of a woman with a machete in the road. Taylor came out of the house, leaving the machete inside, and was arrested.
Police body-cam footage showed Taylor was compliant as she was escorted into the rear of a prison van. Officers found the machete with a 30cm blade inside the house although Taylor’s partner claimed it was a ‘garden tool,’ the court heard.
Taylor admitted she had rowed with the lodger who she said she did not get on with.
She conceded she ‘lost it’ and said she wanted to slash his tyres with the blade. She insisted she would ‘never hurt anyone.’
David Morton, defending, said his client had endured ‘an absolutely awful time’ and had been to ‘some very dark places indeed.’
Taylor, who admitted a single charge of possessing a knife in a public place, was handed a 15-month community order including 20 days of rehabilitation activity.