Attacker who headbutted another woman breaking collarbone says she regrets assault

Tiffany Marshall bizarrely claimed to the Sunday Worldthatshe acted just as anyone “in their right mind would do” when she nutted a woman in a row over her boyfriend.

The 26-year-old was ordered to do community service and probation rather than jail for a vicious attack on her ‘rival’ 12 months ago.

After her hearing she told the Sunday World she was “no thug”, saying the other woman was “slabbering” but that she “regretted” her shocking behaviour.

Marshall, from Laurel Park in Ahoghill, Co Antrim, had entered a guilty plea to causing actual bodily harm to her female victim on November 17 last year.

In addition to a 12-month probation order, she was also ordered to complete 100 hours of community service, with a clear warning from District Judge Nigel Broderick that “if she doesn’t do it she goes to prison”.

A prosecuting lawyer told Antrim Magistrates Court, sitting in Ballymena, how police were called to “an ongoing disturbance” at an address on High street in the town at around 3.20am.

Officers could see that the victim, Amy Mulholland, was in a “distressed state” and had a visible cut to her nose.

She told police how she decided to leave the party when the defendant arrived because there was “animosity” between them in the past as “she had gone out with the defendant’s boyfriend”.

As she left, however, she was headbutted by Marshall who also grabbed her and threw her to the ground. She felt a “sharp pain at her neck” and when she went to hospital, it transpired she had sustained a fractured collarbone.

But when confronted by the Sunday World, Tiffany Marshall said she was “very happy” to put her side across, claiming that Amy Mulholland had never actually gone out with her boyfriend but kept saying she had.

Tiffany told us: “We never really got on. It’s been going on for ages.

“On the night of the incident, she was going on about my boyfriend.

“We just collided.” She added: “It was self-defence. I’m not a thug.”

Tiffany says she left the party but was arrested shortly afterwards.

“I left but the next thing I knew there were eight cops who came to arrest me,” she says.

“That’s when it hit me, that I’d really messed up. I thought, oh sh*t, what have I done?”

She says she fully regrets her actions because it has cost her so much.

“I lost my job because of what I did,” she explains. “I had been working in a butcher’s but part of my bail I was put on a tag and given a curfew to be home until 7am.

“I started work at 5am so I couldn’t do the job anymore. But I also lost my freedom for a year and my family were really angry about it until they came to court this week and heard what happened.

“The police arrested me one time because I was home ten minutes late after my curfew one night. It’s been very stressful to deal with it all.

“And of course, I was really worried about going to prison. That’s still hanging over my head if I get into anymore trouble, which I certainly won’t.

“I know I went too far but it was a very heated situation.

“This is my first ever offence.”

We can reveal her headbutt victim Amy Mulholland was convicted earlier this year of assaulting a police officer in an alcohol-fuelled incident in June 2021.

The 33-year-old also resisted another police officer during the same incident after she had smashed a man’s window with a wine bottle.

But Mulholland was the victim of the particularly nasty assault five months later by Tiffany Marshall.

The court was told on Tuesday that, when arrested and interviewed, Marshall refused to answer police questions but defence counsel Alan Stewart revealed that as well as the background of the animosity over a boyfriend, there had also been “a number of Facebook posts” on social media.

“That’s absolutely no excuse for the behaviour,” conceded the barrister, who also accepted it was a very serious case.

He argued, however, that due to issues with drug misuse, Marshall would benefit from probation supervision, submitting that “it seems to me that she needs help”.

Imposing the combination order, DJ Broderick said that as well as the “significant physical injury, there’s the emotional trauma as well”.

“Whatever led to it, it’s no excuse for taking violence into your own hands,” said the judge, who also imposed a two-year restraining order.

Amy Mulholland found herself in front of a judge at Ballymena Magistrates Court in January when she was convicted of criminal damage, assaulting a cop and resisting another cop.

The court was told she threw a wine bottle at the home of a man in the town’s Queen’s Street area in June 2021.

A defence lawyer said the incident was “fuelled by alcohol”.

steven.moore@sundayworld.com