A woman who assaulted a detention officer has been granted permission to temporarily suspend her curfew to travel to Spain for a friend's wedding. Louise Whelan, 31, from Poulton, Merseyside, is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to the assault and to using threatening or abusive words or behaviour likely to cause distress.
The incident took place on March 31 last year, and Whelan was also charged with assaulting a police officer, but that charge was withdrawn by prosecutors and incorporated into the threatening behaviour charge. She is due to be sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court on October 5.
Whelan has a string of previous convictions, including a 15-month suspended sentence for a homophobic attack in Birkenhead with her two sisters, during which one sister wielded a hammer. She was found in breach of that sentence in June after shoplifting three times from an Asda store in Birkenhead, and was handed a three-month jail term, suspended for 12 months.
In June this year, she was also fined £2,000 for breaching lockdown rules to travel 30 minutes to a McDonald's to "look for fit fellas", after being stopped by police in her Mercedes. She had also been arrested on a warrant for failing to attend court over the theft of a £4.99 stool from a B&M store, for which she was found guilty in her absence.
At South Sefton Magistrates' Court, conditional bail was imposed with a curfew between 7pm and 7am and electronic monitoring. Her solicitor told the court she had a pre-booked holiday to Spain to attend a friend's wedding, and magistrates agreed to suspend the curfew for four days. They warned that any breaches would result in her being taken into custody.
