Woman begged for her life after being lured to Leeds drug den and tied up, beaten and robbed
She was strangled with electrical cable until until she passed out
A woman feared she would die after being lured to a house by so-called friends who tied her up, beat and assaulted her in a terrifying ordeal last more than seven hours.
Shevonne Wright and Jeanette Martin were both jailed at Leeds Crown Court this afternoon after admitting offences of robbery, having stolen the woman’s bank card and then emptied her account at a nearby ATM.
The victim was strangled with electrical cable with such force that at one point passed out.
In a victim impact statement read to the court, the woman said: “It was the most harrowing and most terrifying six-and-a-half hours of my life.
“I was so terrified I was going to die. They beat me for hours.
“It was the worst experience of my life and I will never get over what they did to me in that house.
“I’m constantly reliving what happened.”
She said she suffers nightmares, panic attacks and is often afraid to leave her home.
Prosecutor Tom Doyle said the victim had been known to both Wright and Martin and were all drugs users.
The woman had moved away after suspecting 42-year-old Wright was trying to exploit her.
In November last year, she was in contact with 34-year-old Martin, who persuaded her to come to Harehills to help her decorate her new home on Bayswater Row.
She arrived the next day, at around 2.30pm, on November 16, and was met by Martin who showed her into a house.
However, it was a condemned, vacant property filled with rubbish and used by local drug users.
She took the woman up to the attic room where she was made to sit on a mattress where Wright appeared and began attacking her.
Martin joined in and at one point both were on top of her raining blows down. Martin then told Wright to “get her legs” and they tied her up with electrical cable.
Wright continued to punch her and Martin wrapped the cable around her neck and pulled leading her to temporarily lose consciousness.
She was begging for her life, pleas which were ignored.
They took £70 cash from her and her bank card, with Martin then going to a nearby ATM on Harehills Road to withdraw £160.
Meanwhile, Wright continued to assault the woman.
Eventually, a man they knew came to the house and he untied the victim, who fled at around 10pm, meaning she had been in the house for more than seven hours.
The culprits were both arrested and held on remand, appearing in court today over a video link from HMP New Hall.
Wright, of Brown Hill Terrace, Harehills admitted robbery and false imprisonment. She has previous convictions for violence and robbery.
Mitigating, Mark Foley said she has had a “significant addiction to drugs” which led to her criminality. He added: “She regrets what happened and accept and recognises the impact this had.”
Meanwhile Martin, of no fixed address, has previous convictions for thefts and drugs and had been on a suspended sentence at the time.
Mitigating on her behalf, Michael Walsh said her time in jail had “given her time to reflect on her own situation”.
He said she was accepts responsibility, but said the matter just “got out of hand”.
She too is also a drug addict, but was on a methadone prescription to reduce her need for heroin.
Judge Neil Clark told the pair: “It was a planned and unpleasant attack. Although it may not have been planned to be extreme, it became extreme.”
He jailed both for six years and two months, and gave them each a lifelong restraining order to keep them away from the victim.