A WOMAN who repeatedly smashed her victim in the face with a hammer has been jailed for five years and 10 months.

Drug addict Kimberley Fisher and accomplice Tracy Williams turned on 31-year-old Natalie Smith, who had been staying at Williams’s home, after returning to the house to find she had not tidied up.

Photographs of the injuries, which included severe fractured facial bones, were so graphic that the judge ordered that they should not be shown to the jury at Williams’ trial.

Fisher, aged 32, of Rufford Grove, Great Lever, had denied intentionally causing Ms Smith grievous bodily harm but changed her plea on the day her trial was due to start at Bolton Crown Court.

Williams , aged 43, of Rushton Road, Bolton, was convicted of grievous bodily harm by a jury after denying the offence.

Williams appeared in the dock at her sentencing hearing and Fisher via a video link from Styal prison.

Robert Smith, prosecuting, told the court that Ms Smith, who was homeless, had been staying at Williams’ home and was asleep on the sofa on November 18 last year when Williams and Fisher went out to buy drugs. When they returned a row broke out because Ms Smith had not tidied up.

In a bedroom Fisher grabbed a hammer and Williams told Fisher to “get her toes”.When Fisher’s aim missed she continued the attack with the hammer.

“She began to smash her in the head with it,” said Mr Smith. Seriously injured Ms Smith begged Williams for help, but she replied,”Help you? F... off and die!” and kicked her.

Ms Smith, bleeding heavily, stumbled out of the room and into Ms Williams son’s bedroom, collapsing on the bed. The attackers dragged her from the room by her hair, with Williams telling her son, who left the the house to call police, that Ms Smith had “deserved it”.

Ms Smith was thrown down the stairs and escaped into the street where she tried to get help from people in a car.

“Blood was dripping from her hair,” said Mr Smith.

Ms Smith eventually collapsed on the doorstep of a house in a neighbouring street and was unconscious when police arrived.

Williams initially refused to open her door to police and, when officers entered the property they found blood covering the stairs and upstairs rooms with Fisher trying to wipe blood from the laminate flooring. A claw hammer was found in a cupboard.

The court heard that Ms Smith is now in constant pain and will have to have surgery to insert a metal plate in her face.

Rosalind Emsley-Smith, defending Fisher and Kevin Liston, for Williams, stressed that both defendants had become drug addicts as teenagers and had suffered domestic violence, with Fisher having previously had facial bones broken.

“I can’t believe I’ve done to somebody else what I’ve had done to me,” Fisher is reported to have said.

Judge Richard Gioserano jailed Fisher for five years and 10 months and sentenced Williams to two and a half years behind bars. He acknowledged that both defendants had had difficult lives but added: “That doesn’t excuse, for one minute, the awful attack on this girl.”