No jail for young mother who set up ambush for her child's father

Ashleigh Podmore, aged 20, recruited Jamie Miller and Leon Handy before ringing Nathan Sandel to arrange a meeting outside his home in Slacky Lane, Bloxwich, on January 15, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.

Mr Sandel was not alarmed when he saw the two men with her at the rendezvous because he thought they were his friends, said Ms Siobhan Collins, prosecuting.

Miller, 23, who was in a relationship with Podmore at the time, punched Mr Sandel in the face and started pulling him about by his top before hitting him in the face again while his 28-year-old brother Handy snatched a £99 mobile phone bought by the victim hours earlier, continued the prosecutor.

The trio fled as the driver of a passing car stopped at the scene allowing Mr Sandel, who suffered facial injuries, to alert the police to the incident which was captured on CCTV.

He said the attack had left him afraid to leave his home alone.

Mr Oliver Woolhouse, representing Podmore, from Friezland Way, Walsall Wood, maintained it had been an isolated incident following an angry exchange of text messages and had not been repeated.

Podmore and Miller, of Baldmoor Lake Road, Birmingham, both pleaded guilty to assault while Handy, from Gretton Road, Edgbaston admitted robbery.

All three were given 10-month terms in prison or a Young Offenders Institution which were suspended for 18 months.

She was ordered to do 100 hours unpaid work while the men were each given 200 hours and all three had to pay £150 compensation to the victim.

Judge Peter Barrie told her: "You instigated all of this. You assembled Miller and Hands and called Sandel out from his home. It was three against one."

He said he would not lock her up because she was the prime carer for a young child and decided it would be unfair to immediately jail the two men because they were all equally to blame for what happened.