A mother was left with horrific injuries after a stranger slashed her face with broken glass in a random attack at a bar on Beaujolais Day.
Natalie Arthurs was brutally attacked by Emily Williams, 25, in the toilets of the Peppermint Bar on Swansea’s Wind Street in an unprovoked assault.
This week, Williams was sentenced to five years in prison for inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent, with the judge describing the thug’s actions as “evil, almost beyond belief.”
The incident left the 36-year-old woman with permanent scars on her face and unable to return to work. She has also been forced to abandon her role within the Army Reserves because she does not feel comfortable in the uniform due to her obvious facial injury.
Recalling the night, Miss Arthurs said: “I was putting lipstick on in the mirror when I heard a voice with an angry tone shouting something like: ‘Who do you think you are?’
Natalie Arthurs was brutally attacked by Emily Williams, 25, in the toilets of the Peppermint Bar on Swansea’s Wind Street in an unprovoked assault.
The incident left the 36-year-old woman with permanent scars on her face and unable to return to work.
‘Wicked’ Williams sentenced to five years in prison for inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent
“I heard a glass breaking and I turned around and saw a woman with blonde hair and a glass in her hand. I saw the glass coming towards my face. It was all so fast. I felt something cold cutting into my face. I knew it was bad. ‘
This week, Swansea Crown Court heard about the assault which took place on November 17, 2022, when many people came to the city to celebrate Beaujolais Day.
Miss Arthurs had gone out to eat and another bar in the area before heading to Peppermint with a friend.
Shortly before 6 p.m., she was in the bathrooms when Williams came in and started yelling at her. Williams then broke the glass he was carrying and used the gun to cut his victim’s face.
Miss Arthurs said she struggled with her attacker, who attacked again with the glass, but this time towards her neck. Instead, she brushed his shoulder and her chest.
During the trial, a woman who witnessed the attack said Williams looked “possessed” when she smashed the glass. She described how the attacker looked as if he was “cutting flesh” when she used the weapon to cut Miss Arthurs.
Miss Arthurs said: “I felt like someone was trying to kill me.” There was such a feeling of rage and anger in the person that she did this.
‘I remember looking in the mirror on the wall while we were fighting and seeing flesh hanging from my face and nose. There was blood everywhere, like a scene from a horror movie.
The skin on the tip of Miss Arthur’s nose was cut in the attack and she suffered a wound to her chest and shoulder and superficial wounds to her neck.
The woman’s friend had also been in the bathrooms with her and was able to get help getting Williams taken away by the facility’s bouncers.
Miss Arthurs said she remembers sitting on the “cold, damp floor” of the bathroom feeling “completely alone” until a woman came and sat next to her to comfort her and help stop the blood from the facial wound.
There was a five-hour wait for the ambulance, so Miss Arthurs’ parents took her to Morriston Hospital, where she spent the next three days while police arrested Williams.
The court heard Miss Arthurs suffered a “deep, jagged wound” to the left side of her face which severed the salivary gland in her cheek and damaged a nerve.
The skin on the tip of his nose was also cut in the attack and he suffered a wound to his chest and shoulder and superficial wounds to his neck.
Miss Arthurs is currently under the care of Morriston’s burns and plastics department and faces further procedures and treatments in the coming years.
Miss Arthurs, who lives in Cwmrhydyceirw, Swansea, said: “It took 15 months for this to come to trial. “For those 15 months I think I was in shock, like on autopilot.
‘Only now am I assuming everything. I’m going to have this scar for the rest of my life, I know it. In the past she always avoided conflict and felt like she was in control.
‘This has shocked me and shown me that you are not in control of what happens. It was a random attack, unprovoked and without any reason. This has changed my outlook on life.”
Miss Arthurs is currently under the care of the Morriston Burns and Plastics department.
The mother-of-one said she felt unable to return to work as a self-employed cleaner and quit her job in the Army Reserves, where she was training to be a driver in the Royal Logistic Corps.
She said she reluctantly ended up with the Territorials because she didn’t feel comfortable wearing the uniform when people might think she was a veteran or a hero who had been injured in the line of duty.
In a powerful statement read to the court by prosecution lawyer Alycia Carpanini during the hearing, Miss Arthurs said the events of that November afternoon “changed my life forever”.
He said he had been an outgoing person but now has overwhelming anxiety and panic attacks, “cries most days” and has difficulty sleeping most nights, and asks incessantly: “Why am I ?
The victim said she is now constantly nervous and has trouble trusting people and said she “hates” seeing the scar or touching it, which she had to do several times a day as part of her rehabilitation.
Miss Arthurs also described her young daughter’s “distress” at seeing her scarred face for the first time and said the pain she knows the incident has caused her mother weighs heavily on her.
Emily Monica Williams, of Lady Street, Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire, had been convicted earlier in the trial of inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent when she appeared in the dock for sentencing.
He has no previous convictions but has a youth caution for speed drug possession from 2013. Jon Tarrant, for Williams, said the defendant was the sole carer of two young children and said references to the court show “a very different side ” of Williams that was seen during the trial process.
Judge Huw Rees told Williams that what he had done to a stranger in the Peppermint toilets had been “wicked, almost unbelievable” and had left his victim with an “obvious disfiguring wound” to his face.
He noted that the defendant continues to deny causing harm with a glass and said that, in his opinion, the version of events she gave in evidence about an altercation between her and the victim was a “complete fiction.”
He described Miss Arthurs as “brave and determined” and said her character was demonstrated by her resigning from her role in the Army Reserves as she did not want people to think she had received her injury in that way.
He said: “She is clearly a woman of admirable character.”
The accused was sentenced to five years in prison. Williams will serve two-thirds of that sentence in custody before being released on license to serve the remainder in the community.
Williams was also the subject of a restraining order prohibiting him from contacting his victim or posting anything about her on social media for the next 10 years.
Miss Arthurs said that as she comes to terms with what happened, she wants to offer help to other people who are going through the darkness of similar situations.
She said: ‘The emotional impact of something like this changes your life forever. “I hope that people can reach out to me and that I can be the light for people who are going through this kind of thing.”