Soldier targets mum in nightclub attack

Jun 19 2011 by Coreena Ford, Sunday Sun

A MODEL mum has told how her confidence has been shattered by a serving soldier who broke her jaw in a vicious nightclub attack.

Emma Morris’s own daughter could barely recognise her after Phillip Carroll, 25, battered her on the dance floor of a Middlesbrough nightclub after she and her pals refused to dance with him.

Her modelling career has been put on hold and she is now fighting to rebuild her life after the random attack, which left her with two missing back teeth, chipped front teeth, a fractured jaw and permanent nerve damage in her mouth.

Emma, 25, wanted Carroll jailed, but a judge at Teesside Crown Court spared him jail to allow him to continue serving in the Parachute Regiment, and instead fined him £2,500 and ordered him to pay his victim the same amount.

At the court hearing in April, Graham Silvester, defending, told how Carroll, 25, of Greta Road, Skelton, North Yorkshire, had no previous convictions but one caution for a public order matter, and that the assault had been one moment of madness.

He pleaded guilty to inflicting grievous bodily harm.

Mr Silvester said: “He wishes he could put back time – the fact is he has no recollection of this incident and why it happened. He bitterly regrets the injury he caused to that young lady.”

Yet Emma remembers only too well the events of August 8 last year.

She and her friends had been enjoying a night out at the Arena Nightclub in Middlesbrough when Caroll sidled up to them, but they politely asked him to go away.

Undeterred, he was soon back beside them.

Emma said: “I shouted over the music ‘look, we’ve all got boyfriends so can you just leave us alone please?’.