By Staff Reporter

Last updated at 12:06, Thursday, 18 October 2012

A drunken woman who stood on the balcony of her Carlisle home throwing knives and scissors at police below has been sent to prison for 15 months.

Kathleen Joan Broughton, of Carlisle

Kathleen Joan Broughton, 51, eventually had to be tasered by police who had gone to her home in Mayson Street, Currock, on June 8 because of complaints from her neighbours that she was drunk and behaving in a threatening manner.

Broughton, who had previous convictions for assaulting the police and carrying an offensive weapon, pleaded guilty at the city’s Crown Court yesterday to using or threatening unlawful violence.

Prosecutor Gerard Rogerson told the court three people had called the police that afternoon because of her disorderly behaviour after she had spent most of the day drinking.

The first, Philip Richardson, who knew her, saw her in Blackwell Road, “shouting and swearing and obviously in a foul mood”, and saying she was going to stab someone with whom she had had an argument.

Then Claire Nicholson was alarmed by her “throwing knives and shouting” on the street, before David Braniff, who lived nearby, spotted her looking agitated and staring in a threatening way through his window.

When PC Claire Whatman arrived at her house to talk to her, Mr Rogerson said, Broughton was “immediately abusive” as she spoke to her from the balcony.

Holding a pair of scissors and a large knife, she shouted such threats as “If you come in here I will knife you” and “I am going to slit your throat, you will die.”

PC Whatman called for help, but when reinforcements arrived Broughton continued her “vile abuse” and started throwing things –including the scissors and at least two knives – at them. One knife – thrown at a male police officer “with a degree of force” – missed him only because he ducked, Mr Rogerson said.

When Broughton was eventually restrained with the help of the taser gun, she told police: “I am not safe with a knife.”

In mitigation defence barrister Greg Hoare said the case was “troubling in many ways”. He said Broughton suffered “personality disorders and occasional psychosis” and had had problems with some of the people she lived near.

“When she is sober she can make perfectly rational decisions,” he said.

Judge Peter Hughes QC said it might be a good thing that Broughton would lose her home while she was in prison because it would force the authorities to find her somewhere more suitable to live when she was released, adding: “I trust that the authorities will give very serious thought to how you should be helped and supported.”

He told Broughton, who has learning difficulties, that he could not overlook the fact that she was “developing a worrying record of disorder in public involving the use of weapons.”

First published at 11:32, Thursday, 18 October 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk