A MOTHER from Bala who struck a 15-year-old girl over the head with a bottle has been spared immediate jail but told by a judge she had carried out “a cowardly attack which caused a nasty injury.”

Judge Niclas Parry at Caernarfon crown court imposed a 14 months prison sentence, suspended for 18 months with 200 hours of unpaid work and a ban from Bala pubs for a year.

He said that because defendant Rhian Haf Roberts, 30, of Mount Street, Bala, was of very limited means he would not make a compensation order but the victim could claim from another source.

Roberts pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding of the girl in the street at Bala last September.

Richard Edwards, prosecuting on Thursday, said she’d been struck on the back of the head, a blow sending her to the ground.

She sustained a one-inch cut which had to be glued but the bottle had not smashed.

The teenager said she had a headache afterwards and the incident left her scared of being out alone in the dark.

Elen Owen, defending, said Roberts had never sought to excuse her behaviour.

She’d apologised to the victim’s father and this had been accepted.

Roberts worked 48 hours a week at night on a minimum wage as well as looking after a young child and had not had a drink since the incident.

Judge Parry said she had no previous convictions, was in employment and looked after a young child and it was because of these factors that the sentence could be suspended.

But he told Roberts: “This was an attack with a weapon in a public place in the presence of others in a highly charged, alcohol induced atmosphere.”