Teenage girl-gang’s seven-month violence spree comes to an end

A gang of teenage girls have been jailed for victimizing young female students around the Wilmslow Road and Fallowfield area of Manchester in a series of physical assaults and violent robberies.

A Manchester Crown Court sentencing hearing was told, “Female revellers and university students were targeted in night-time street attacks on Wilmslow Road and its outskirts during the gang’s seven-month crime spree.”

In a string of attacks from September 2013 to April 2014, the gang followed its victims on the Wilmslow Road late at night and brutally assaulted them in isolated areas, after binging on vodka.

In one of their many confrontations, five women in Fallowfield were followed, grabbed by their hair and dragged to their knees before being repeatedly punched and kicked by Margaret Grey and Zara Hussain.

On the same night, three hours later, another female was targeted in the same area when the gang charged at her and stole her phone, ripping her earring out and left her splattered in blood on the street.

While on bail two-and-a-half months later, Margaret Grey, Daniella Hodge and Chloe Minchion beat up another group of female University of Manchester students, before escaping with one of their bags in the Victoria Park.

Four months after their last violent burglary, Grey and Hussain, again while on bail, were involved in a hit-and-run incident with a shopkeeper. The shopkeeper later told the police that he was “terrified” of the pair, who punched him ten times in the face and directed racial slurs at him.

Margaret Grey, 18, from Meade Grove, Longsight, has been jailed for 32 months and barred from seeing the other three girls by an ASBO after admitting two robberies, two attempted robberies, and racially aggravated assault. Zara Hussain, 20, from Burnage, was served with a 20-month sentence after admitting robbery and attempted robbery. Daniella Hodge, 18, from Openshaw, was given a two-year community order with supervision and a requirement to attend a probation service programme for robbery and attempted robbery.

Chloe Minchion, who recently gave birth to a child, is wanted by police after her absence at the Manchester Crown Court for sentence for her involvement in same offenses.

Crown Court Judge Robert Atherton dismissed their insistence of regret, saying: “The victims of all those robberies were young women going about enjoying themselves and minding their own business. You fall into that group of people who go out, get drunk, misbehave, and say ‘I’m terribly sorry, I was drunk, I’ve had a bad upbringing, I didn’t mean it.’”