Bride convicted after wedding-day brawl

(The Independent)

A BRIDE who spent her honeymoon night in cells after violence flared at her wedding reception was convicted yesterday of assaulting police officers.

Michelle Darcier, 28, of Whetstone, north London, who was alleged to have taken on six police officers in the fracas at her wedding on St Valentine's Day last year, was given a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay court costs of pounds 100.

The wedding disaster led to Darcier's marriage ending two months later, stipendiary magistrate Susan Jones was told at Sheffield magistrates' court.

Darcier and her husband are now separated and she is working as a bus driver to provide for her two children.

Ian Gilmore, for the prosecution, said Darcier had shouted and sworn at officers, and kicked and scratched them as they tried to restrain her. She was convicted of three charges of assaulting police and one of being drunk and disorderly, but was cleared of three other charges of assault. She had denied all the charges.

The magistrate said there was no evidence to prove Darcier had carried out all six assaults, but that it was clear she had lost control and became "wild and violent" when officers tried to restrain her.

"The best day of your life turned into a brawl of huge proportions but you did take your part in that," she said.

Darcier and Mark Thompson, a Scots Guardsman, had been married just a few hours when police were called to their reception at The Office public house in Sheffield after a fight between her father and the bridegroom's stepfather sparked the mass brawl. Robert Hannah, the pub landlord, said: "It was like pandemonium." It took four officers to carry the bride, still in her wedding dress, to a police van.

Darcier denied having been drunk, saying she was assaulted by police. "I was just trying to get my children out," she told the court. "One officer told me they wouldn't normally arrest a bride on her wedding night but they hadn't had a good scrap in ages."