Trio are cleared of giving guardsmen a battering
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Your support makes all the difference.Three young women were yesterday cleared of giving a "bloody battering" to two members of the Welsh Guards - the regiment which defied the odds in the Boer War and fought off 4,000 Zulu warriors with fewer than 100 men at Rorke's Drift.
Michael McGowan, defending the women, asked the jury at Knightsbridge Crown Court: "Who would have thought that over a century later two Welsh Guardsmen would be appearing as victims of assault at the hands of three young girls?"
The jury had been given conflicting accounts of who was to blame for a drunken brawl outside an all-night store in Fulham, south-west London. The soldiers, who had been out drinking, had claimed they were forced into a tactical retreat after being verbally abused and set upon. But the women claimed the squaddies shouted sexual taunts at them and then launched into a rough and tumble.
After four-and-a-half-hours' deliberation, a jury of seven men and five women cleared Nina McNeill, 18, Martina Kearney, 21, and Cloe Marshall, 19, all of Fulham, south-west London, of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Ms Marshall's mother, Susan Braddish, said after the verdict: "It is a wonderful result but I think it is ridiculous that the case was brought to court. My daughter is only seven stone. I was amazed they could think she attacked a Welsh Guardsman."
The two soldiers, Vincent Jones, 19, and Dean Morgan, 17, had told the court they had spent the evening last July drinking heavily before buying some bread and crisps at the all-night food store and were standing on the pavement as the women arrived.
The pair claimed their request for either a cigarette or a light was met with a stream of abuse. But the women had made counter claims that one of the two soldiers had exclaimed: "Cor, you've got gorgeous legs!" before adding: "You are a bunch of slags."
The powerfully built Private Jones was then said to have pushed one, head-butted another and punched a third as the unseemly melee developed. However, the soldier came off worse. Describing their retaliation, Ms McNeill explained that she and her friends were not impressed when Private Morgan laughed at them from behind the apparent safety of the shop window after the initial fracas: "We thought: two blokes hitting us birds, it's not on."
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