Vindictive Walsall woman threw herself onto brothers' car bonnet
A vindictive woman who threw herself onto the bonnet of her half brother's car told police he had deliberately run her down, a judge heard.
Rebecca Smith made an official statement in support of the bogus claim and instructed her 17-year-old daughter to follow suit, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told.
The shameless 39-year-old even faked an injury to her ankle and tried unsuccessfully to make an insurance claim, revealed Mr Richard McConaghy, prosecuting.
Jonathan Emery, the victim of the plot, was ordered to attend a police station and interviewed about the allegation but was quickly freed without charge after disclosing he had a film of the incident that proved the defendant was lying.
He thought Smith's behaviour so strange that he switched on his mobile phone's video recorder moments before she hurled herself at the car outside their grandmother's house in Monmouth Road, Walsall around 6.30pm on August 15 last year.
Mr McConaghy explained: "There were some ongoing issues between the two and as Mr Emery prepared to drive from the address he saw his half sister standing on the pavement.
"As he inched the car forward she stood in front of the vehicle and then threw herself across the bonnet before falling off to the side. She lay on the pavement looking quite unperturbed until police arrived when there was a complete change and she went into hysterics."
After police saw the film footage from Mr Emery's phone she was interviewed three times and on the last of these admitted both fabricating the story and encouraging her daughter to support the untrue version of events.
Mr Christopher O'Gorman, defending, pointed out that her half brother had gone to the police station voluntarily and had not been arrested.
Smith from Poplar Avenue, Bentley, who had no previous convictions, admitted attempting to pervert the course of justice and was given a 12 month jail term suspended for two years with a two year restraining order banning any contact with Mr Emery.
Judge Martin Walsh told her: "Your cynical complaint to the police led to him being detained but not for an extended period of time. It is absolutely essential that witness statements are honest and accurate but because of the information contained in the your psychiatric report, which I will not go into in public, it is in the best interests of everybody that I suspend the inevitable sentence of imprisonment."
