Disabled woman who racially abused a hospital consultant and assaulted a nurse is sent to prison

Having checked that Hydebank Women’s Prison could cope with wheelchair bound Leanna McFall, Dep. District Judge Chris Holmes told the 45-year-old her behaviour was “utterly and completely unacceptable.”

Describing her as “a thief and not a very nice person to start with,” the Antrim Magistrates Court Judge, sitting in Ballymena, told McFall he recognised she has to use a wheelchair “and you have my every sympathy.”

He added however that everyone in society is equal and treating her as an equal to able bodied people meant she had “the same responsibilities as every able bodied person in society and you don’t get to behave like this.”

Imposing jail sentences totalling eight months, he told McFall “I’m afraid you have reached the end of your rope.”

McFall, from High Street in Ballymena, had earlier entered guilty pleas to two counts of assaulting the nurse on consecutive days on 25 and 26 November 2021.

A prosecuting lawyer described how McFall had been a patient on ward 3 at Antrim Area Hospital “for a couple of weeks” when she began verbally abusing staff on 25 November. “She said that if she got her hands on any of them she would knock them out,” said the lawyer.

The first assault happened when the nurse was administering an insulin injection to another patient when McFall, who was “shouting and screaming” about going for a smoke, threw a pillow at her, hitting the nurse’s hand.

That same day McFall’s “behaviour escalated,” shouting about demanding pillows and “a trip to the shop,” to such an extent that ward staff had to call for security.

The following day, 26 November, a consultant was doing ward rounds when McFall was “verbally abusive to him and used racially abusive language,” calling the nurse a “useless fat b******.”

At around 3.30 that afternoon, McFall asked the nurse to empty her catheter bag at her bedside and the court heard that to do so, the nurse had to get down on her knees.

“That exposed her head,” said the lawyer, outlining how McFall “grabbed her chart and struck her in the top of the head with the metal part of it.” That action caused the urine in the catheter bag to “spill over the victims arms and knees,” leaving her “in pain and shock and tearful.”

Arrested and interviewed McFall denied being abusive but accepted that she “probably” committed the “catheter incident.”

Defence solicitor Emma McCann said McFall’s life had been “chaotic” and blighted by alcohol addiction but that she accepts “her behaviour was totally unacceptable.”

“It’s clear that she has her own physical limitations,” said the solicitor, submitting that while McFall “hasn’t endeared herself particularly well to probation….I will be asking you to avoid custody.”

Ms McCann posed the question “what great benefit custody would be as opposed to community service” but DJ Holmes replied that given her behaviour, “frankly I don’t care.”

“I’m way past the rehabilitation point here,” he told the court.

Although DJ Holmes imposed four months jail on each count to be served consecutively, he also freed McFall on £500 bail pending appeal.

He warned her however “we will see how it goes in the appeal court but if I was you, I would be making arrangements for being in prison.

“I do not see a County Court Judge feeling any better about this than I did.”