A VIOLENT attacker who glassed a woman and left her with serious facial injuries was caught after the police used a mobile phone tracking app to find her victim.
Gabrielle Lilian Linstead smashed a pint glass over the woman’s head in a “heinous” crime following a night of drinking, and threatened to kill her.
But despite the severity of the attack, the terrified victim refused to call the police and instead stayed in the property for two days with Linstead and used electrical tape to try to replicate stitches on her wounds.
Linstead was eventually arrested when the victim’s boss became worried and contacted the police, who used the Find My Phone app to track her down to the property.
Crown Advocate Lauren Hallam, prosecuting, told the Superior Number of the Royal Court yesterday that the woman stayed in the flat as she was “overwhelmed by what the defendant had done and was worried about the repercussions of reporting the incident… as she did not want the defendant to get into trouble”.
She added: “Instead, [the victim] cleaned up her injuries in the bathroom and used electrical tape in an attempt to replicate butterfly stitches on her facial injuries.”
By the time police arrived, the victim had replaced the tape with adhesive bandages. She was treated at the scene by paramedics before being taken to hospital, where she was told she will eventually need plastic surgery.
Linstead carried out the assault while she was on bail for another attack, in which she kicked and punched a woman who was left with bruises around her eyes and required hospital treatment.
Two neighbours called the police, who arrested Linstead.
Advocate Hallam said: “She claimed that [the victim] had caused her own injuries, having smashed her own face off the cupboard and said: ‘I’m going to get you’.”
The case did not progress at the time and was reopened sometime later, according to the police, with Linstead eventually pleading guilty to two counts of grave and criminal assault in relation to both assaults.
Advocate James Bell, defending, said that Linstead suffered childhood trauma and struggled with substance misuse.
She sought help and had an extended stay at Silkworth Lodge rehabilitation centre.
Announcing Linstead’s sentence of four years and eight months in prison, Commissioner Alan Binnington pointed towards the impact the attacks had had on the two victims.
He highlighted that the first woman described feeling scared of Linstead when she left the house, while the second victim’s injuries were “clearly significant”.
He reiterated the court’s previous judgments on glassing, saying: “Glassing is a heinous crime as it is so easy to cause injuries which mark a person for life or remove an eye and that’s why the court almost invariably imposes a custodial sentence.”
He said: “You are a danger to those with whom you associate and will continue to be until you address [your] issues.”
She was given a two-year sentence for the first assault and a two-year, eight-month sentence for the second one, to run consecutively.
On top of her prison sentence, Linstead was given a five-year restraining order and a seven-year domestic abuse protection order. She was also put on the domestic abuse offenders register for seven years.
The Jurats sitting were Lieutenant-Bailiff Robert Christensen, Steven Austin-Vautier, David Gareth Hughes, Jeremy Ramsden and Joanne Averty.
