A woman has been spared jail despite terrorising neighbours during a prolonged harassment campaign in which she woke them by screeching threats, left notes on a car making unfounded accusations and banged on a couple’s door with a frying pan.
Susan Keith, 46, from Northallerton, targeted four victims during a series of incidents in Brompton and Sowerby, York Magistrates’ Court heard.
Prosecutor Kathryn Walters said that Keith began her harassment campaign in the early hours of April 2 when she went to the home of a neighbour in Brompton.
She banged on the victim’s door with a frying pan and began “screaming verbal abuse” at the named woman.
Due to the “ferocity” of the banging, the frying pan’s handle snapped off, but Keith continued attacking the door with the broken handle. She cut herself in the process, causing blood to “spatter all over the door”.
Ms Walters said the victim, who had had “previous encounters with the defendant”, was inside the flat at the time and was terrified that Keith would break in.
A witness said the incident lasted for up to half an hour and he “couldn’t believe what he was seeing”.
Three months later, on July 9, Keith turned up outside the home of a named man on Topcliffe Road, Sowerby, shouting abuse and scurrilous accusations at him. She then kicked his door, causing damage, and threw a brick at the front window.
Police were called out and found a kitchen knife in her handbag upon arresting her.
About a week later, Keith turned up at the home of a neighbouring couple in Hilton Close, Brompton, and left an abusive note on their car, making similarly disturbing and false accusations.
In a subsequent incident in July, the couple were awoken by Keith “hurling abuse” at them after she had gone out into the street “on five occasions”.
The repeated, expletive-ridden abuse, in which Keith shouted that she would “batter the police when they came and then batter you”, had caused the family great upset and distress.
Keith, of Hilton Square, Brompton, was charged with three counts of harassment, threatening behaviour, criminal damage and carrying a knife. She admitted all the offences, which occurred between April and August, and appeared for sentence yesterday (Wednesday, September 18) after being remanded in custody.
All but one of the offences were in breach of a conditional discharge imposed in mid-April for a previous offence of damaging property.
Elizabeth Aisbitt, Keith’s solicitor, said her troubled client had severe mental-health problems including suspected schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and an emotionally unstable personality disorder.
Following the incident in Sowerby in April, she had been sectioned in various hospitals under the Mental Health Act but was discharged in early July, when she began terrorising her neighbours in Brompton.
Ms Aisbitt said that Keith had an “entrenched beliefs system” and “the beliefs she holds…have not gone away”.
District judge Adrian Lower told Keith: “It’s clear to me that you are a lady who over the last few months has not been enjoying the best mental health.
“There’s another side to you, Ms Keith, which perhaps some people don’t really understand, and it’s that you are not well and you need help and the best way of protecting people, it seems to me, is to try and assist you… so the local community can be assured that if you get the help you need, there’s not going to be any more of this (and) you don’t have to keep going to prison to keep out of trouble, and your neighbours will feel far safer.
“All in all, the offences you committed are so serious they must be dealt with by way of a custodial sentence (but) I’m prepared to…suspend the sentence to give you the opportunity of working with the Probation Service and with others to make sure this comes to an end.”
Keith received a 22-week jail sentence, but this was suspended for two years.
She was ordered to participate in a rehabilitation programme but there was no compensation ordered for any of the victims because of her limited financial means.
Mr Lower also made a restraining order, to run for an indefinite period, which bans Keith from contacting any of the four victims and going to their homes.
She was ordered to pay £85 prosecution costs and a £154 victim surcharge.
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