ATEACHER who opened fire with a pellet gun after "yobbos" launched a campaign of vandalism against her family was yesterday jailed for six months.
Linda Walker, 48, who works with children with behavioural problems, kept the gun in her underwear drawer for four months after her shed was burgled.
In August last year, a confrontation with a gang of youths drove her to fire the weapon at the pavement near one teenager's feet.
After a week-long trial at Manchester Crown Court last month, Walker was yesterday sentenced to six months in jail for possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence and one month for affray.
Recorder Louis Browne told her that the sentences would run concurrently. He also said that she would serve half of the sentence and that the rest of the term would be suspended.
Walker showed little emotion as her sentence was read out.
The incident occurred near Walker's home in Urmston, Greater Manchester, which she shares with her partner, John Cavanagh, and her twin sons.
At her trial, the court was told she had been receiving phone calls calling her 17-yearold son James a "poof". The wing mirror of her other son Craig's car had been broken off.
Walker told police her shed had been broken into, her garden ornaments had been thrown over the wall and fish had been stolen from her pond.
The final provocation came when Walker, who was head of year 11, in charge of food technology and careers co-ordinator at New Park School in Salford, saw a washing-up liquid container full of water had been emptied over her son's car.
In a phone call to the police, she said: "I'm going over to that field over the road, I've got an air rif le and a pistol and I'm going to shoot the vandals."
Leaving the house with her partner's Walther CP88 gaspowered pellet pistol and her teenage son's air rif le, she pointed the pistol at the feet of Robert McKiernan, 18, and then fired it at the road.
Walker told police she had left the house "like a madwoman possessed", adding: "I feel totally, totally distressed after all these things that have been happening. I know you do your best, but the law is on the side of the yobbos, these criminals, not the victim."
In mitigation, Farrhat Arshad told the court that Walker was a woman of good character, who had given her lot to society.
Sentencing Walker, the judge told her that the offences she had committed were "serious" and that her response to the incident had been wholly disproportionate.
He added: "Both the weapons were capable of causing lethal injury."
The jailing of Walker follows the death this month of twoyear-old Andrew Morton who was killed by an airgun near his home in Glasgow's east end.
Jack McConnell is pushing for a tightening of firearms legislation throughout the UK.
He said: "It is my view and that of the justice minister that the current law needs to be tightened, but we believe in doing that in a considered way."
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