Christmas jail sentence

A forty year old woman - Amy Winter - has been jailed for six months for assaulting two paramedics who were trying to help her on Christmas Eve.

Emergency services were called to a fire in her flat in Surrey Street, shortly after 15:00 on Christmas Eve. She was safely removed from the flat and firefighters extinguished the fire. She was taken to an attending ambulance for treatment.

It was inside the ambulance that she punched the paramedics repeatedly causing minor injuries to their arms.

She was arrested and charged with two counts of assaulting an emergency worker and was remanded in custody over the Christmas period to appear at Brighton Magistrates’ Court on Boxing Day. She pleaded guilty to both offences and was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for each offence, to run concurrently.

In 2018, the Government changed the law so that anyone found guilty of assaulting a police officer, firefighter, prison officer or paramedic faced a maximum of 12 months in prison.