Belinda Price, 53, pictured outside her home six months on from the attack
A knuckleduster attack has left a mother of two with injuries so severe her face now needs four metal plates to hold it together.
Belinda Price, 53, was punched head on after answering the door to two drunken thugs at a friend’s house.
Inebriated Nicky Sandwell, 26, was wearing the illegal weapon when he struck Ms Price’s face after turning up to a property in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, with his drunken accomplice Charlie Temple on August Bank Holiday Sunday, last year.
After assaulting Ms Price, the pair punched and kicked three other victims in an attack called ‘horrific’ by a judge who jailed the duo this week.
Ms Price described the moment she was attacked by Sandwell while she was holding her pet dog.
‘I was leaning against the sink with Cookie in my arms when I was suddenly aware of stripey T shirt and I felt this blow like striking metal hitting my head over my left temple,’ she said.
‘The blow made this awful sound as I was hit, but my only thought was for Cookie. I think that’s why I didn’t fall to the ground. I just knew I had to get Cookie away.’
She managed to stagger out of the kitchen into the garden and got through a fence panel.
Devastating: Belinda Price, pictured above in hospital after the attack in August last year, was left with injuries to the face after being hit by Nicky Sandwell who was wearing a knuckle duster
‘I remember crouching down and hiding behind a bush with Cookie. I didn’t know if he was going to be taken or harmed and I just wanted to protect him,’ she said.
Meanwhile the attackers were still in the house. Temple smashed through the bathroom door to set up on victims Patrick Casey and his girlfriend.
Mr Casey was punched in the face while his partner was shoved into the bath.
Before going back downstairs Temple went into the father’s bedroom and and emerged moments later with a £20 note.
Back in the bathroom the injured son heard his attacker shout: ‘Thanks. let’s go.’
Sick: Drunken thugs Charlie Temple, left, and Nicky Sandwell, right, both photographed above in the police station, have been jailed after violently assaulting four people
Ms Price said: ‘I was still in the garden but then I heard Francis screaming. He’d found his dad unconscious by the front door and I knew the men had gone.’
The pair were seen shortly after buying alcohol at a nearby shop.
Temple was arrested shortly after the attack and Sandwell handed himself in the next day.
Both Temple and Sandwell were jailed this week after a hearing at St Albans Crown Court for an attack they carried out on four people including Ms Price on Sunday, August 27 last year.
Temple pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm, burglary and two charges of common assault while Sandwell admitted wounding Mr Casey’s father with intent and inflicting grievous bodily harm to Ms Price.
Terrified: Belinda Price, pictured above with beloved pet Cookie, says she has been left afraid to leave her home
Passing sentence on the men Judge Andrew Bright QC said: ‘This was a horrific attack.’
He jailed Temple for 27 months and Sandwell was given an 18 month sentence.
Both men will have to serve at least half their terms behind bars before they are released.
The court was told one victim will be scarred for life.
Ms Price who suffers from osteoporosis sustained multiple fractures to her face that day.
Her left cheek bone was fractured in three places, the sinus wall was shattered and so was the base of her left eye socket.
She will have to undergo more surgery this Spring when a false floor implant will be inserted into her left eye socket for her eye to be ‘properly held in price.’
‘How can it be right that you can nearly take someone’s life away and they get a sentence which means they will be out on the streets in nine months time,’ Ms Price said.
‘The surgeon who operated on me said: ‘You do know you could have died’ because the artery in my temple where Sandwell struck me could have easily burst. It just seems so unfair.’
Six months on, the make-up artist says she feels like a prisoner in her own home and fears she will never feel normal again.
She said: ‘To be honest I feel let down by the system. It seems all in favour of the perpetrator.
‘It left me frightened to go out for fear of bumping into him. I became a prisoner in my own home, I still feel like that, isolated. If I do go out I’m looking over my shoulder the whole time. It shatters your trust in people.
‘Then at the end of it all to hear he will only be in prison for nine months for what he did to me has come as a shock. I couldn’t have died that day. Is that all my life is worth?
‘Nine months is nothing for what I’ve been through. What sort of man can do this to a woman? I weigh just eight stone. His parents should be ashamed of him.’