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At one stage in the kitchen Collins repeatedly punched her husband about the face before “tipping a kettle of freshly boiled water” over his head, prosecutor Stephen McCourt said.

McCourt said although her friend got her to stop that assault, she punched her husband again in the head later.

The next afternoon an ambulance had to be called and Collins was rushed to hospital, where he lay in a coma for a number of days. He also received plastic surgery for injuries to his scalp.

Judge Kinney told Collins, of Hynford Street in Belfast, that her attack last March was serious and sustained, carried out in domestic circumstances against a then vulnerable victim.

Kinney accepted that Collins' marital relationship was volatile, violent and destructive, characterized by chronic drinking and domestic violence.

Reports indicated, said the judge, that Collins was anxious and vulnerable and would require support and supervision.

He added that while she did not pose a general danger to the public, she could represent a possible danger to her husband.

Defense QC Terence McDonald said what occurred had been an escalation of previous incidents.
He said it was a depressingly familiar story of a couple who both had alcohol problems, and when drinking their behavior became erratic, sometimes involving violence.

McDonald said Collins was agreeable when sober, but she had a certain naivety about her married relationship. 

As part of her sentence, Kinney ordered that Collins serve an extended two-year period of supervised licensed parole upon her release from jail.

Belfast Telegraph
 

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Nster.com