A hairdresser who beat her friend so badly she had to have part of her skull removed has been jailed.
Della Carroll, 26, threw at least two punches at her neighbour’s face causing her a brain injury and a stroke during the attack at her home in Doncaster, Yorkshire.
The woman was also left paralysed and will need lifelong care after the attack last April, reports Yorkshire Live.
Carroll and her neighbour became friends because they both suffered at the hands of violent partners and both struggled with addiction, Sheffield Crown Court heard.
But their relationship deteriorated, jurors were told.
Prosecutor Katy Rafter said that the victim described how Carroll “had battered her” and that she sat on her legs and hit her in the face.
On the day of the attack, the victim had been driven back to South Yorkshire by police after officers saw her drunk in Gainsborough.
Richard Barradell, defending, told the court that Carroll had been shot with a BB gun pellet days before the assault and had spoken to the police.
He added that Carroll’s victim had been asked to confront her over what she had said to the police.
But as she did so, she was punched twice in the face and possibly fell over before making her way out of Carroll’s home in Dunscroft.
CCTV from neighbouring properties showed the woman leaving Carroll’s house and holding her head before going on to a petrol station where she bumped into a friend.
Ms Rafter said that the concerned pal took her to hospital as she saw the injuries to her face, but Carroll’s victim refused to be admitted.
She was taken home and an ambulance was later called.
Doctors discovered the woman had suffered a traumatic brain injury, a haematoma, a stroke and traumatic amnesia.
Surgeons had to remove part of her skull during decompressive surgery and she has been left with speech and cognitive issues as well as paralysis in her right arm and partial paralysis in her leg.
The woman was recovering in hospital for at least eight months and will need complex rehabilitation and 24-hour supervision for the rest of her life.
However, Mr Barradell argued that this was not a prolonged assault and that it was the victim who had entered his client’s home prior to the attack.
He added: “The injuries here are catastrophic. They were friends. She is very upset for everybody involved.”
Mr Barradell told the court that when Carroll was not bingeing on crack cocaine, she was a hairdresser and that she did not intend for these injuries to happen.
Carroll, of Abbey Green, admitted causing grievous bodily harm and was sentenced to three years in prison.
An indefinite restraining order was also imposed banning her from contacting her victim.
