A WOMAN destroyed £10,000 worth of booze in just five minutes after smashing up the alcohol section in Aldi.

Barbara Stange-Alvarez, 36, was seen using her arm to sweep hundreds of bottles from the shelves and onto the floor at the supermarket in Stevenage, Herts.

Within minutes of walking down the aisle, the floor had disappeared under a carpet of broken glass and huge puddles of liquor.

At one point, Stange-Alvarez slipped and fell on the glass, cutting her hand.

Shoppers in the store watched on in horror, recording the devastating scenes in footage which soon went viral.

Stange-Alvarez, from Swingate in Stevenage, appeared at St Albans Magistrates’ Court on Monday, where she pleaded guilty to criminal damage, racially aggravated common assault and a racially aggravated public order offence in which she hurled insults at a security guard at the hospital where she had been taken for treatment to her hand.

District Judge Margaret Dodd hearing the case ordered her to pay compensation to Aldi of £5,000.

Prosecutor Clinton Hadgill told the court how on the afternoon of November 25 2020 Stange-Alvarez had gone into the supermarket store in Fairlands Way, Stevenage.

Most read in News

“She made her way directly to the aisle where the alcohol is and proceeded to drag hundreds of bottles of alcohol off the shelf,” he said.

In video footage capturing the terror, she can been seen slowly moving along the aisle close to the till area using her left arm to sweep the bottles off the shelf and send then crashing into the ground.

Mr Hadgill said on reaching the end of the aisle, she went back to the beginning and repeated the exercise.

Ninety seconds into her wrecking spree, the defendant slipped and fell onto the broken glass, cutting her right hand, said the prosecutor.

Reaching the end of the aisle again, she stood there grabbing single bottles and hurling them to the floor.

The prosecutor said a security guard from another store came to the shop and was able to detain Stange-Alvarez until the police arrived.

She made her way directly to the aisle where the alcohol is and proceeded to drag hundreds of bottles of alcohol off the shelf.

Mr Hadgill said officers took the woman to the Lister Hospital in Stevenage where she kicked a security guard in the shin and hurled racial insults and the man telling him: “You Indian people. I pay my taxes for you to be in this country. Go back to your own country, I hate Indians.”

Later, while being booked into police custody, she told an officer: “I did not say Indian f*****, I said Kashmir f*****.”

In an interview she said she felt she was suffering from mental health issues brought about by being unable to work, depression, an abusive relationship and she said she was not receiving the treatment she thought she should have been.

That day she said she had visited a local mental health clinic seeking help for her mental state, but was unhappy at the response she got and “lost the plot.”

Strange-Alvarez who represented herself in court said she had been unable to work during 2020 adding: “I struggled because I was unemployed.”

District Judge Margaret Dodd told her “lots of people” had been in a similar predicament during the year.

Stange- Alvarez went on: “Loads of things affected me and I was not able to get the treatment.”

'WON'T HAPPEN AGAIN'

She told the judge: “It won’t happen again” and she said the mdication she was now on had resulted in her being more “stabilised.”

Passing sentence, District Judge Dodd said she could give her credit for her guilty plea and she noted she had not been in trouble before.

The judge told her “you weren’t well at the time” but she said many other people had also been out of work and furloughed at the time and had not behaved in such a way.

She told Stange-Alvarez her behaviour towards the hospital security guard had been “upsetting and hurtful.”

He had simply been trying to do his job, only to find himself sworn at and assaulted, said the judge.

She was given a 12 week jail sentence which was suspended for 18 months. She was also made the subject of a Mental Health Treatment Requirement as well as Rehabilitation Activity Requirement, during which she will work with probabtion staff on her thinking skills.

Finally Stange-Alvarez was told she would have to pay Aldi £5000 in compensation and court costs of £85.

Source: Read Full Article