Crime Solicitors

A policewoman has been shot in the face on only the second day of a new job with her local police force.

The 33-year-old officer had become a response officer after requesting a more exciting job in the force while she was working as a neighbourhood officer.

She was wearing body armour at the time of the shooting, but was attending a routine antisocial behaviour call in Headingley, Leeds when 37-year-old James Leslie fired at her at point blank range through a closed door. He escaped on a mountain bike and was later arrested.

The officer was hit in the face and also sustained injuries to her neck and right hand. Her colleague dragged her away from the scene of the shooting and she was taken to hospital, where her condition is reported as poorly but stable and not life threatening.

Neighbours had called the police to Leslie over a row about a bottle thrown through a window the night before.

Leslie had gone to the house in question and complained that a light from a torch was being shone into his house, which he allegedly continued to complain about loudly until the bottle was hurled through his neighbour’s window in the early hours of the morning at around 2.30am.

At around 4am a shot was heard, the witness said, after a female police officer had arrived to take statements from himself and his housemates about the altercation with Leslie and the bottle thrown through their window.

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