Helen Yvonne Barton made false call to police claiming she had been stabbed by home intruder

The 20-year-old made emergency call claiming she had been stabbed and was bleeding profusely. It was all a fabrication.

A 20-year-old Toowoomba woman had wasted “significant police time and resources” by making a false emergency call that she had been stabbed by a home intruder.

Helen Yvonne Barton had made the emergency call on July 12, 2023, in which she claimed she had been stabbed in the leg and was bleeding profusely after she was threatened to hand over her shoes by an intruder, Toowoomba Magistrates Court heard.

Police prosecutor Rowan Brewster-Webb told the court police had spent significant time searching the Glenvale neighbourhood before deeming Barton’s call to be false and that the “stab” wound turned out to be a “nick” sustained the previous day.

Barton pleaded guilty to making a false emergency call as well as to striking a Queensland Ambulance Service officer called to help her at Glenvale on May 26, 2023, and to failing to take care with a needle and syringe during the same incident.

Mr Brewster-Webb told the court Barton had previous offences of serious assault of police and using a carriage service to make threats and was on probation at the time of these offences.

The Toowoomba court house, police station, and watch house in Hume St.

She had also been sentenced to a suspended jail term in the past for spitting on a police officer and assaulting a doctor, he said.

Barton’s solicitor Farah Haddad told the court he had represented her for some years and that his client had a number of mental health issues arising from childhood trauma.

His client struggled with complex mental health issues but she was now in a stable relationship with a man who was supporting her in court and she was now in a better place, he said.

After her arrest, Barton had spent 48 days in custody which had been very difficult for her, he said.

Though she fell short of a legal defence, her mental health issues were serious, Mr Haddad submitted.

Despite a Queensland Corrective Services officer telling the court Barton was no longer suitable for community based orders, Acting Magistrate Rowan Silva fined her $300 for breaching her probation orders and resentenced her to 15 months probation to include random drug testing, fined her $750 for the false emergency call and sentenced her to five months jail, wholly suspended for 10 months, for the serious assault of the ambulance officer.

Originally published as Helen Yvonne Barton made false call to police claiming she had been stabbed by home intruder