Woman cleared of stiletto-in-eye boyfriend attack

Staci Hargreaves, 34, was acquitted of causing Gavin Taylor grievous bodily harm with intent and an alternative charge of inflicting grievous bodily harm on the second day of her trial at Bradford Crown Court.

Judge Roger Hunt yesterday ruled the prosecution evidence against her was so inherently vague and weak that no jury could convict her and there was nothing to counter the suggestion she was acting in self-defence, believing she was about to be attacked.

The 34-year-old's then boyfriend Gavin Taylor, 28, suffered potentially life-threatening injuries when the heel of one of Miss Hargreaves' shoes penetrated his left eye and burst a major blood vessel in his brain after she kicked out at him.

The freak injury was caused during a drunken row between the couple as they headed home to Stalybridge, Cheshire, after a night out in Huddersfield.

The jury heard on Monday how a cabbie had picked up the couple and a male friend in the early hours and was leaving the town when the defendant and her boyfriend started arguing.

Mr Taylor was in the front seat of the Toyota taxi while Miss Hargreaves was in the back with the friend. She kicked out after Mr Taylor turned round and knelt up on his seat.

One of her 3in (7.6cm) stiletto heels penetrated his eye, fracturing the socket, entering his brain and damaging a blood vessel.

The court heard that Mr Taylor suffered life-threatening injuries and was in hospital for a month but later made a "remarkable" recovery.

Miss Hargreaves, who said she was too drunk to remember what had happened in the taxi, had denied causing any injury deliberately and suggested that she had been acting in self defence.

Prosecutor David McGonigal told the jury Mr Taylor had chosen not to give evidence.

The other man in the taxi gave a statement in which he also said he was too drunk to know what had happened that night.

After the prosecution closed its case Miss Hargreaves's barrister Ian Brook submitted there was no case to answer on the basis of the vague and tenuous evidence.

Judge Hunt said neither of the other two people in the taxi was any real help in clarifying what happened on February 7.

"In simple terms the prosecution has no evidence, it seems to me, to gainsay the defendant's proposition that there was an instinctive movement of her foot in self-defence which accidentally and unintentionally caused this injury," said Judge Hunt.

"In my assessment there is not here evidence upon which a jury,

properly directed, could convict."

The judge said it was clear that everyone was "heavily intoxicated with drink."

One witness said Mr Taylor had slapped Miss Hargreaves earlier in the evening, knocking her to the floor. And Miss Hargreaves had told police he had been violent towards her in the past.

The judge was also told of a series of convictions Mr Taylor had for violence.

In 2005 he was jailed for 16 months for false imprisonment following an incident in Greater Manchester in which a man was tied up and put in a car boot before he was driven to a river where he eventually drowned.