A MUM launched a bloody bottle attack on her neighbour and threatened her with a baseball bat - after a bottle was thrown at her first, smashing near her head.

Shannon Taylor lobbed a glass milk bottle over the fence at her next door neighbour, Laura Lapajne, which split her lip, an injury which required five stitches.

The 26-year-old defendant has not returned to her home in Barnes Way, Worcester since and is now living with her grandmother in St Paul's Street.

The city mum, who now faces eviction from her housing association property, had already admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm and affray following the incident at around 4pm on April 29 this year.

However, magistrates accepted Taylor's basis of plea to the assault - that a cider bottle had first been thrown at her before she threw a milk bottle at Ms Lapajne, hitting her in the face.

Both complainant and defendant gave evidence from the witness box. Sam Lamsdale, for Taylor, secured expert evidence which showed that something was thrown over the fence although it was accepted by the 'multi media forensic examiner' who reviewed the video footage that it could not be established to a certainty that it was a bottle.

Video evidence was also supplied by Taylor's mother in which she could be seen using tongs to pick up fragments of broken glass from a bottle of Alska Fruit Cider. The defence case, accepted by magistrates as 'compelling', was that this had been thrown first.

Describing the footage, Andrew Mitchinson, prosecuting, said: "The bottle was thrown. It struck the injured party. You will see the person with the baseball bat is the defendant. That is the affray."

In her evidence Ms Lapajne claimed that Taylor had made threats to 'drown children in the pool' after the defendant had been squirted with water guns and there was an argument before the bottle was thrown at her over the fence. The witness denied throwing the cider bottle first.

In cross-examination Mrs Lamsdale said: "You were hurling abuse at her, calling her a crack head."

Ms Lapajne said: "I did call her a crack head."

Leah Bunton was with Ms Lapajne at the time after they had both completed the school run. She accepted throwing the milk bottle back across the fence at Taylor.

Taylor said in her evidence that children had been squirting her with water guns and that 'Laura was giving me abuse', claiming both Ms Lapajne and Ms Bunton were 'drunk at school' and had insulted her across the playground, including calling her a 'crack head'.

She said: "One moment we were arguing and the next she (Laura Lapajne) launched the bottle straight at me. The next minute she is just literally chucking the bottle which smashed just by the side of me."

Taylor added: "It just missed my face. It was up at head height."

Taylor accepted she had gone back into the house, picked up the glass milk bottle which she had previously bought from the Really Good Dairy Farm and thrown it over the fence. She denied threatening to drown anyone.

Miss Lamsdale asked magistrates to bear in mind her guilty pleas and consider 'the provocation she was under at the time'.

Magistrates imposed a 12 week prison sentence suspended for 12 months. They also imposed a restraining order for 12 moths preventing her from having contact, directly or indirectly, with both Laura Lapajne and Leah Bunton.

She was also ordered to pay costs of £185, a victim surcharge of £128 and compensation to the victim of £100.