A MOTHER-OF-THREE has described having her little finger bitten off by another woman in front of her children during a neighbourhood disagreement.
Catherine Hendry told a court she was dragged to the ground and repeatedly punched by Linda Coleman, 43.
Coleman bit so hard on the little finger that the tip came off in her mouth, said Ms Hendry, who later had to have an inch of the digit remov
ed by surgeons.
Coleman, of Bleachfield, Leith, is on trial at Edinburgh Sheriff Court, accused of severely injuring and permanently scarring Ms Hendry by assaulting her in Edinburgh in February.
She denies the charge and claims she was acting in self-defence during an attack by Ms Hendry.
Ms Hendry, 32, told a jury she had been friends with Coleman for ten years while they lived next door to each other in Leith's Redbraes Place.
But relations had soured six months before the alleged attack after Ms Hendry made an allegation about a member of Coleman's family, she said.
On February 4, Ms Hendry had returned to her ground-floor flat around 7pm with her youngest children, aged nine and three, and her partner James Welby.
Coleman, who had been visiting her niece in the flat next to Ms Hendry's, had appeared alongside her as she was lifting her three-year-old up the outdoor steps into the close in the buggy.
Coleman grabbed Ms Hendry and dragged her to the ground, forcing her to let go of the buggy, before scrapping with her in the front garden, she said.
"She was hitting me and pulling my hair, screaming she was going to kill me," said Ms Hendry.
"I started to fight back to try and get her off me then she bit my finger. I screamed but she wouldn't let go and eventually it came off."
The trial, before Sheriff John Horsburgh QC, continues.
The full article contains 323 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
