A social worker who admitted assaulting four cabin crew members during a drunken air rage incident wept in court as a judge suspended her four-month prison sentence for two years.
Sentencing Heather Ann McCarroll (38) at Antrim County Appeal Court, Judge Gerard McNamara said her behaviour on the Jet2 flight to Antalya had been “an absolute disgrace and absolutely outrageous” and that the mother-of-two deserved a jail sentence.
He added: "I think it is of significance that you yourself are a victim of significant domestic abuse and that abuse actually forms a backdrop to this case."
At an earlier hearing, McCarroll, from Kilmakevit Square in Cullybackey, entered guilty pleas to four charges of common assault and single offences of criminal damage to a toilet belonging to Jet2, being drunk on a plane, endangering the safety of an aircraft and behaving in a threatening, abusive or disorderly manner towards cabin crew on September 6 last year.
Two weeks ago, District Judge Nigel Broderick imposed a four-month prison sentence but McCarroll was freed on bail pending an appeal.
On Monday, a prosecuting lawyer outlined how Jet2 staff contacted police about a disruptive passenger who began shouting and swearing at cabin crew.
At one stage, McCarroll went to the toilet and while she was inside the cubicle, she could be heard “shouting sexual obscenities and kicking the door".
She left the toilet in such a state that when she came out, “it was deemed necessary to close it for the rest of the flight”.
Meanwhile, McCarroll went to the front of the plane where she got hold of the intercom and was “screaming down it loudly” to such an extent that the captain had to switch it off.
The court heard how McCarroll “punched a crew member to the throat” and then went to the galley area at the rear of the plane where she assaulted two other members of the cabin crew, kicking and punching one to the forehead, stomach and leg and the other to the leg."
McCarroll was interviewed by the PSNI where she admitted being intoxicated but claimed she remember little of the incident due to the alcohol and two diazepam she had taken.
Defence counsel Aaron Thompson said the background to the offences was that the defendant herself had been assaulted and abused before she boarded the flight.
Affirming the length of the prison sentence but suspending it for two years, Judge McNamara told McCarroll he was only doing so “because of the significant history of domestic violence and because domestic violence played a part in this case so the court is prepared to extend mercy".