Jail for Hartlepool heroin addict who attacked Hartlepool shop assistant

Heroin addict Paula Harman, 47, from Hartlepool, had committed 120 offences, mainly of theft, to feed her addiction to heroin and other drugs.

She had a foil-lined shopping bag to avoid triggering theft alarms when the assistant at the Lidl store, in Easington Road, Hartlepool, tackled her last December after a tip-off from another customer who saw her concealing items in it.

Harman punched him in the arm and swung her handbag at him two or three times, said prosecutor Uzma Khan.

He suffered a hairline fracture and his arm was put in a sling, forcing him to take two weeks off work, and he was unable to drive his car or to pick up his two-year-old daughter.

Harman was also in breach of a two-year suspended jail sentence for supplying Class A drugs to an undercover police officer, Teesside Crown Court was told.

Adam Keenaghan, defending, said that drugs had wrecked Harman’s life after she gained GCSE qualifications at school and trained as a hairdresser.

He said she was shoplifting to survive and to fund her drug addiction after her benefits had been stopped.

Mr Keenaghan said drug treatment had reportedly improved her health.

Harman of Holdforth Court, was jailed for 20 months, ordered to pay £156 compensation to the Lidl worker and given a five-year restraining order banning her from contacting him.

She pleaded guilty to breach of a suspended jail sentence, possession of Class A and B drugs, actual bodily harm assault, theft and a public order offence.