A teenage girl with autism was arrested and hauled before the courts because police mistakenly assumed she was drunk.
Despite being completely sober, 17-year-old Melissa Jones spent ten hours in a police cell, was finger-printed and had her DNA taken.
She was charged with being drunk and disorderly, forced to appear in court and became suicidal while waiting eight months for her case to go to trial.
Last week, however, prosecutors finally realised they had got it wrong and agreed to drop the case against her.
Her mother, Christine Evans, 49, a training manager, yesterday said her daughter, who also has learning difficulties, had been through ‘hell’. ‘Having this hanging over her for the past eight months has had a terrible effect on her,’ said divorcee Miss Evans.
‘She has a basic understanding of right and wrong, so to be arrested for something she didn’t do was devastating.
‘She has tried to commit suicide and is having weekly counselling. She hardly ever goes out any more.’
Miss Jones’s ordeal began shortly before midnight on June 16 last year when she and a friend went to a shop near her home in Edge Hill, Liverpool, to buy some Coca-Cola.
Another customer, a drunken woman, became aggressive when the assistant refused to serve her, and attacked Miss Jones and her friend when they intervened
You all do understand that this is what is coming down the tracks to us all. The good police are leaving, they can see the writing on the wall. They are setting up more secret unlawful summary justice courts soon, they trialed them at the olympics, they use them in the Social Services to steal children. How long till this country resembles places like china and N.korea. They are moving to overthrow our laws and rights, from unalienable human rights granted by your creator, to writes written down by the EU. Again, just another thing that has happened whilst most of you were sleeping.
I believe you are right it is the mother of all storms heading at us face on. When will it end. I doubt I will see its end. Its hard to believe that my Great Great Grandfather was born in times of extreme hardship and here we are a mere 150 years later rapidly heading back to those sad sorry times.
So, this is our modern-day, intelligent Police force? I thought you had to have a degree of acuity to be a Police officer? God help you if ‘Plod’ finds you after you’ve had a stroke. This is another clear case of jumping to conclusions. I’m not a Police officer but I’d check first to see if the person is ill. If Inspector Morse were still alive, he’d be s****ing himself at the competition.
This was not the work of ONE policeman. Just think how many of these morons were involved in this fiasco.
This is beyond incompetence. Jail these thugs.