Fence warfare

Grandmother convicted of assault after squirting neighbours with disinfectant over her Covid fears

A gRANDMoTHER who squirted her neighbours with disinfectant over her fears of catching Covid has failed to overturn her conviction for common assault.

Jane Downall, 61, used anti-bacterial spray to clean her garden fence after Samantha Fisher and her daughter Ebony had leaned over it to chat to another neighbour.

Droplets of the ‘potentially corrosive’ liquid landed on their faces and both went to hospital with suspected burns.

Police sent four cars to the scene in Heywood, Manchester, and arrested Downall

‘Two metres... get away from my fence’

after finding her neighbours had redness to their faces, though neither suffered any lasting injuries.

Countryside warden Downall claimed Mrs Fisher had been joking about the pandemic and making ‘exaggerated coughs’ on the afternoon of the incident on April 5 last year – just weeks into the first lockdown. Mrs Fisher’s husband Clifton said the spray was then aimed at him after he confronted Downall.

He told magistrates: ‘I said, “what have you just done?” She said “two metres, get away from my fence” and then tried to spray me. But I dodged it.’

Construction worker Mr Fisher described how his wife was speaking to a neighbour three doors down when Downall went inside and returned with the bottle of spray. He added: ‘Ebony and Samantha were on a step with their heads above the fence and Miss Downall was directly facing them. She sprayed several times.’ Downall told police she was ‘just trying to protect my parents’, adding: ‘Sam was coughing in the garden and shouting and leaning over the fence.

‘I did not use the spray to inflict any injuries. I was trying to inflict injury on the germs.’ She later told Tameside magistrates: ‘I was frightened of Covid and conscious of the two-metre rule. We were in lockdown.’

Downall, who claimed Mr Fisher had sworn at her, added: ‘They had been making jokes about the pandemic and exaggerating coughing. I started spraying where I thought the droplets would be and that’s when Sam shouted that I had assaulted her.’

Downall, once a contestant on the Nick Knowles BBC wildlife show Wildest Dreams, was convicted of common assault.

She appealed against the verdict but her plea was thrown out by a judge who conditionally discharged her for six months.

Rejecting her appeal at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court, Judge Angela Nield said: ‘We do not find the appellant made a deliberate action to harm the complainants but her actions were reckless.’ She added that what happened was ‘specific to her heightened agitation of the pandemic and the situation she perceived herself to be in.’