A Coventry mother who stabbed a woman who was trying to act as a peacemaker, puncturing her lung, dropped to the floor crying about her baby when a judge sent her to prison.
Carly Seymour had pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to wounding her victim with intent to cause her grievous bodily harm and possessing an offensive weapon in public.
Seymour (29) of Purcell Road, Courthouse Green, Coventry, collapsed in tears as she was jailed for six years – after the judge rejected an argument that the sentence could be suspended.
Prosecutor Angus Robertson said the background to the incident was that Seymour had been seeing a man who had previously been in a relationship with a woman called Hannah Carson.
Events spiralled out of control on May 25 after Ms Carson went looking for Seymour to confront her and threw a brick through the window of a working men’s club where she worked.
Seymour was not there at the time, but Ms Carson tracked her down and turned up in a car with a friend, Fallon Boffey, who ended up as Seymour’s victim.
There was then a confrontation during which Seymour was assaulted by Ms Carson, causing her to drop her mobile phone.
Miss Boffey, who had remained in the car and had taken no part in the confrontation, got out and picked it up to hand it back to Seymour who then attacked her with a knife.
Miss Boffey suffered a gash to the palm of her hand as she put it up to try to protect herself – and Seymour then stabbed her three times, once to the arm and twice to the shoulder.
And as a result of one of the wounds to her shoulder, Miss Boffey suffered a punctured lung, said Mr Robertson.
Miss Boffey was able to get back into the car, and was taken to hospital where she was treated for her injuries.
And when Seymour was arrested shortly afterwards, she still had the knife on her, Mr Robertson added.
Theresa Hunt, defending, said that as a result of ‘difficult and traumatic experiences,’ Seymour has ‘periods of disassociation’ when she distances herself from reality.
“She was labouring under a similar experience when she committed this offence. It was the day of her grandmother’s funeral.
“The trigger for the offence was the brick being thrown through the window of her father’s property, and the fear that someone could have injured daughter.
“Faced with the fact that someone had thrown a brick through the window where her two-year-old daughter was, she was receiving text messages from Miss Carson.
“It is plain Miss Carson was pursuing Miss Seymour, and she was faced with the arrival of Hannah Carson and Miss Boffey.”
Miss Hunt said their arrival was so erratic that the car crashed before Ms Carson pursued and assaulted Seymour ‘who then proceeded to perpetrate this assault on a young woman she didn’t know and had never seen before.’
But urging the judge to pass a suspended sentence, Miss Hunt added: “This is entirely out of character so far as Miss Seymour is concerned. She is devastatingly sorry for what she’s done to the victim.”
But Judge Murray Creed told Seymour: “I have to sentence you for a very serious offence of wounding with intent.
“There was a falling-out between you and Miss Carson, and I accept that she went in search of you at a working men’s club where it appears a brick was thrown through the window.
“Ultimately she did find where you were, and arrived by car with another woman who was the victim of this stabbing, and who was unknown to you and, it seems, played no part in any altercation. In fact, quite the reverse.
“You attacked her and lashed out at her with a knife. She tried to protect herself, and the first injury was to her hand, but you deliberately stabbed at her more times.
“There are three wounds, the most serious of which resulted in a punctured lung.
“The repeated use of the weapon cannot be overlooked. This was not a single moment of a loss of temper, it was the deliberate plunging of this knife into this young woman.”
