Debbie Cavanagh
Apparently this is one woman you really shouldn’t get on the wrong side of.
A teacher who was “scalped” by an angry wife over an alleged affair claims that she was also pursued at high speed and feared being rammed by a car during a second attack.
Mother-of-three Debbie Cavanagh, 29, was convinced that Aisha Johal, 36, had been sleeping with her husband Dean, and took matters into her own hands by inviting her former best friend to her house and then assaulting her.
She cut off part of Aisha’s ponytail with scissors, punched her repeatedly and bit her.
Aisha Johal
Now Aisha has described in court how, months later, Cavanagh spotted her and pupil support assistant Nicola Coppola in a car in Duddingston, Edinburgh and made an obscene gesture at her.
Despite having her five-year-old son in the backseat, Cavanagh then chased after Aisha and her friend while hurling abuse, and even went the wrong way around a roundabout to cut them off.
Aisha said:
As we turned left she gave us the middle finger. [She was] about a yard behind us – we couldn’t see her number plate she was so close. Debbie was gesturing aggressively and blasting the horn in long spurts. As we started round the roundabout she went the wrong way to try and cut us off. I thought, what is she going to do? Is she going to crash into us?
At Edinburgh Sheriff Court, Cavanagh was convicted of causing Aisha fear and alarm during the chase on May 23 last year, despite her own claims while giving evidence that Aisha had approached her car first to call her a “f*cking b*tch”.
Sheriff Pamela Bowman said she had “no doubt” Aisha and colleague Nicola were telling the truth, and found Cavanagh guilty.
Last February Cavanagh received an absolute discharge, leaving her without a criminal record, after the first attack in which she sliced off part of Aisha’s hair in December 2013.
Aisha, who has always denied having an affair, was not the only victim of Cavanagh’s wrath, after she discovered her husband had been unfaithful. Cavanagh went to another alleged love rival’s home two weeks before the attack on Aisha, scrawling insults on the wall and lobbing eggs.
Sentencing for the second attack was deferred for reports until next month.
