Pregnant teenager jailed for 'throwing rocks and stoking fires' in Rotherham migrant riots
19 June 2025, 16:02 | Updated: 19 June 2025, 16:52
A pregnant teenager has been sentenced to 18 months in a Young Offenders Institution for her part in the violent disorder in Rotherham last summer.
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The Holiday Inn Express in Manvers was housing asylum seekers at the time, and was targeted by a crowd.
Footage played to Sheffield Crown Court showed Elarna Garner-Abbey, 19, throwing rocks at police officers as well as stoking fires.
At one point she handed an item that was on fire to another member of the crowd to throw at officers.
She had pleaded guilty to one count of violent disorder in the magistrates’ court. She was due the sentenced last Friday, but she announced she was pregnant before the hearing.
Read More: Violence ‘excessively high’ in prisons driven by overcrowding and drugs, report reveals
It was adjourned to this week, where a doctor’s note confirmed she was in the early stages of pregnancy.
The Recorder of Sheffield, Judge Jeremy Richardson KC, took her pregnancy into account saying it was “difficult” for someone to be pregnant in prison.
He added that this had been an “anxious case for the court.”
The court heard how Garner-Abbey, who’s from Doncaster, had been at the centre of the disorder, with the Judge saying her actions were “so serious, only an immediate custodial sentence would sentence.”
Garner-Abbey had gone to the hotel with 22 year old Philip Wood, who was her partner at the time, but isn’t the father of the unborn child.
He was also sentenced today to two years in prison for one count of violent disorder. The court heard how Garner-Abbey and Wood had been living together in a tent at Meadowhall Shopping Centre in Sheffield.
Both defendants appeared by videolink, with members of Garner-Abbey’s family in tears as she was sentenced.
Both she and Wood were also handed 10 year criminal behaviour orders.
More than 60 police officers were injured during the violence in Rotherham on August 4th last year and it’s believed to have cost more than £1 million in policing.
