A female police officer has been sacked after being caught on CCTV attacking her mother’s love rival in a discount meat aisle of Asda.
A professional misconduct hearing heard that West Midlands Police constable Beth Walker struck the woman with such force that the victim was “knocked flying” at the store in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire.
Panel chairman Harry Ireland said Walker, who was off duty at the time, had carried out a “gratuitous, violent act” on a member of the public.
She was found guilty of gross misconduct and fired.
Walker’s mother had been in a relationship with the man who had gone on to wed Walker’s victim, a hearing in Birmingham was told.
CCTV footage of the incident showed the 40-year-old officer approaching the couple while swinging an empty shopping basket on June 24, 2014.
According to the BBC, the victim told the hearing: “I was in Asda looking into the chiller for meat and Beth had just come up... She barged me and then said ‘that was a long time coming’.”
The Telegraph further reported that the victim, who cannot be named, had not recognised Walker at first and had asked her if she wanted to look into the meat chiller she was viewing.
“I said ‘oh sorry luv, do you want to have a look’?
“And she said ‘don’t luv me’.
“She barged me and then said ‘that was a long time coming’.
“She said ‘it’s not over yet’.”
Footage showed Walker sticking out her elbow before stepping into the woman who then stumbled into a spin, sending a pack of meat she was holding out of her hands.
Walker had reportedly claimed she had only approached the woman to say hello, and said she put her elbow out in a “friendly” greeting.
The BBC quoted her as saying: “I would say it was perhaps ill-timed and somewhat clumsy but due to the confined space and my basket, it just comes over as awkward and a little clumsy.”
Presenting the case against Walker, Matthew Holdcroft told the hearing that she had employed a “direct, violent elbow strike” on her victim.
Barrister Kevin Baumber, representing Walker, said the incident “was a supermarket tiff”, and “more a storm in a teacup than an attack on an innocent member of the public”.
Walker, who had worked in the response and neighbourhood policing teams in Birmingham city centre, was dismissed with immediate effect.