A fuming young mum who deliberately drove her Nissan Micra at her ex-partner was labelled a ‘silly girl’.  

Heather Cherrie, now 20, was 19-years-old when she crawled along South Street, Banbury, tailing her ex and his new girlfriend. 

CCTV captured the moment Cherrie, who has never passed her driving test and only held a provisional licence, hoicked the steering wheel to point the Nissan to face the couple.  

She tentatively pressed the car forward then put her foot down on the accelerator – leaving her ex spreadeagled across the bonnet. 

Cherrie, of Manor Road, Brackley, denied dangerous driving and two counts of common assault, which related to allegations she had slapped the man on two different occasions.  

Jurors convicted her dangerous driving, rejecting her account that she had been visiting her dad in Nottingham and could not have been behind the wheel. 

She was found guilty of one of the assault counts but cleared of the second charge. 

Sentencing her to a three-month curfew, Recorder Anthony Cartin said: “You’ve been a silly girl over the course of a week in June and July last year.”  

He added: “You dragged seven people to court to give evidence against you in what was, frankly, an overwhelming case. 

“You shouldn’t, in fact, have been driving at all. Why you had a car and why you were driving around in it I don’t fathom.”  

The purpose of the curfew, which will last from 9pm to 7am, was to make Cherrie realise there were consequences to her actions, the judge added. 

During her trial, Cherrie told the jury that she had effectively spent the whole of July in Nottingham visiting her father. A picture shown to the jury and purportedly taken on July 3 – the day of the dangerous driving – showed dad and daughter posing for a selfie. 

She told the jury that her father was currently serving time in prison. But she had no answer for why he had failed to respond to requests by the police that he provide a statement either corroborating or denying his daughter’s account.  

Cherrie’s ex-partner and former friends said that she was the one driving the Micra. 

Cross-examining the defendant, prosecutor Robert Lindsey said: “You are a woman scorned and that is why you ran over [your ex-partner] on July 3, isn’t it? You were so angry you just drove straight into him in your car. No one else was in that car, it was you.” She denied it. 

She said that her former boyfriend broke up with her on August 25, 2020, when she had his child – in comparison to the Crown’s case the couple were in a relationship for just two months in 2018. Cherrie said: “The day I gave birth [our son], that is the day we split up.” 

Jurors were told she went up to her ex’s new partner in Banbury on June 26 to try and show her images of the man ‘cheating’. “I didn’t want him to hurt her the way he hurt me,” she claimed.

Following the jury's verdicts, she was banned from driving for a year and until she passes an extended retest, and was ordered to pay £150 in costs.