A woman who took an 11-year-old boy to a riot outside a hotel housing asylum seekers has been jailed for 27 months.
Aimie Hodgkinson-Hedgecox pleaded guilty to violent disorder after she was recorded shouting “incendiary and racist” remarks at police outside a Holiday Inn Express in Tamworth, Staffordshire.
She reacted angrily to her sentence at Stafford Crown Court, looking towards friends and relatives in the public gallery and complaining: “It’s a joke, it’s a f****** piss-take.”
Passing sentence, Judge Jonathan Gosling told the 37-year-old defendant she was “clearly visible” in footage from the riot and was “recording the unfolding violence”.
He added Hodgkinson-Hedgecox’s offending was seriously aggravated by taking the boy to the scene.
“This was anarchy,” the judge said.
“You were lending support to an extremely violent racist protest… where lives were endangered.”
Rioters smashed windows and started fires at the Holiday Inn Express on 4 August as part of the disorder that broke out following the Southport stabbings.
Unrest broke out in many towns across the UK after the deaths of three girls who were stabbed at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in July.
Stafford Crown Court heard Hodgkinson-Hedgecox has 14 previous convictions involving 30 offences, with her last conviction being for battery in 2009.
The court was told she had intended to take the boy to a skate park when she saw the crowd outside the hotel and decided to join it.
Read more:
Grandfather jailed over UK riot dies
Riots and the far right: The global network behind the violence
Inside the simmering anger after the riots
Footage played from the riot showed Hodgkinson-Hedgecox – wearing shorts and Crocs-style footwear – swearing towards police lines and having to pull the boy out of the way as a firework was aimed at officers.
Hodgkinson-Hedgecox’s defence lawyer Stephen Rudge said she had left the area shortly after being recorded on three video clips and she was “not somebody who holds overtly racist views or opinions”.
Prosecutor Fiona Cortese said that following Hodgkinson-Hedgecox’s arrest, she admitted she was shouting abuse about asylum seekers housed at the hotel.
As of 3 October, the Ministry of Justice said 388 people had been jailed over the violent disorder during the summer.
