The Daily Mail reports on a former tuck shop worker, Miss Stokes, who won an employment tribunal case for unfair dismissal against her employer of 17 years, Shrewsbury school. She claimed she was unfairly dismissed for trade union activity and she claimed to have been sexually assaulted by a female colleague. However, she was not awarded the £24,000 in compensation that she had hoped.
Miss Stokes then took revenge on the school by driving her car across the cricket pitch and impressively performing ‘doughnut’ turns on it. She hit a wall with her car, causing some £500 in damage and then went on to assault the school caretaker with a fire extinguisher.
Gillian Stokes had apparently arrived at the school and began to shout obscenities at the staff. She then saw the caretaker, Jonathan Taylor and pushed him. She then grabbed a fire extinguisher and swung at him twice with it, hitting his leg, before proceeding to let the extinguisher off and firing foam at his face and eyes, knocking off his glasses.
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Police were called but when they arrived, she climbed into her Nissan Duke and drove across the cricket pitch before the police finally apprehended her. However, Miss Stokes swore obscenities at the arresting officer.
Gillian Stokes admitted assault and criminal damage and had also breached a restraining order by coming back to the school, which had been issued last November.
Chairman of the bench Sally Themans said: “Regardless of how aggrieved you feel about your treatment and how wronged you may feel you cannot and must not go on to a school property from which you have a restraining order and create havoc the way you did last Friday.
“It’s very serious. It was a deliberate breach of a court order. To let a fire extinguisher off in somebody’s face could have caused a lot of damage.
“You are not going to prison but it is hanging over you, so any breach and there would be no choice but to implement it. That restraining order is there for a reason, just don’t go anywhere near that school otherwise you will be back here and will be in prison.”
The defendant was given a total of nine months suspended sentence and ordered to pay over £600 in compensation.
Her defence, Paul Nicholas, said: “This lady would not have been before the courts if it hadn’t been for what occurred at her old employer.
“That’s the only problem in this lady’s life. She was at that school for 17 years. It has been a torrid, torrid time for her.”
