Last updated at 13:28, Wednesday, 29 July 2009

A YOUNG woman with learning disabilities had to be dragged screaming from a courtroom after being sentenced to two months in prison.

District Judge Gerald Chalk briefly left court number one at Furness Magistrates’ Court as Tia Lousie Street shouted obscenities in his direction.

The 20-year-old defendant – said to be of no fixed abode – was restrained by two prison officers and eventually taken down to the cells.

Street had exploded after the judge revoked her 12-month community order and gave her a custodial sentence of 60 days for three assaults on workers in Tarn House residential home on Mill Lane, Walney.

Mr John Appleby, prosecuting, reminded the court that Street had admitted screaming and swearing when attacking both her supervisor and key worker on February 19.

She had also pleaded guilty to assaulting another duty supervisor at Tarn House on March 19.

Street had subsequently appeared before magistrates on April 20 and been given the community order.

Street was back in court yesterday after admitting stealing jeans and jogging bottoms worth £40 from Debenhams on July 13 and asking for three further offences of shoplifting to be taken into consideration.

Street also admitted breaching the community order by failing to attend on July 24 and to being in breach of a conditional discharge for disorderly conduct.

Mr Appleby added that the latter involved a police officer being subjected to verbal abuse.

Mr Mike Graham, defending, said the thefts from Debenhams, Marks and Spencer and Body Care all happened on the same day and were Street’s first offences of dishonesty.

Mr Graham added: “She has a learning disability and the assaults were committed during an unstable period of her life.

“They coincided with an outside association with someone known to the court and with the misuse of substances.”

The judge said that as Street had been remanded in custody between March 30 and April 20, she would probably be released in a matter of days.

First published at 13:06, Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk