A TEENAGER who violently robbed a younger girl and assaulted two of her pals in a drunken attack has walked free from court.

Santana Zawierska, now 18, pushed and intimidated the victims, aged 12, 13 and 14, after targeting them as they sat outside a youth club in the Ferndale Road area.

And the incident, on a Saturday evening last summer, came a week after Zawierska and her accomplice, who is only 14, lied to police claiming they had been robbed.

As a result of their story two men were arrested and detained, one for 18 hours and the other for seven.

But after hearing that Zawierska had no previous convictions before the incidents, and had an IQ of just 62, a judge imposed a suspended sentence.

Claire Marlow, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court that the robbery took place at about 6.30pm on July 17.

She said the three young friends were sitting outside the club when they saw two older girls with two men on the other side of the road.

Zawierska, who was a few weeks short of her 18th birthday, was brandishing a beer can when she crossed the street to confront the youngsters.

The attacker said, ‘Are you staring at us?’ and as one of the girls said they were not another tried to put her money away in her handbag.

Zawierska pushed one of the youngsters against a wall with her arm across her throat while she pushed another to the ground and stole the handbag.

All three girls were frightened and crying as the older girl tried and failed to get a dog which was with her to attack the children.

The two men had come across the road and one of them told Zawierska, “She’s just a kid, let her go”.

When the police went to arrest her at her grandmother’s home she refused to co-operate spitting and trying to bite them and assaulted one of the officers.

Miss Marlow said a week earlier the same two girls had contacted the police to say they had been robbed by two men. They made statements at the police station and as a result the men were detained and questioned.

But when officers became suspicious Zawierska admitted they had made up the story after falling out with the men.

Zawierska, of Denholme Road, Park South, pleaded guilty to robbery, wasting police time, two counts of common assault and assaulting a police officer.

Marcus Davey, defending, said his client had spent a few weeks in custody on remand after breaching her bail conditions.

He said she had a very low IQ and was easily led by the other girl who, though younger, was far more sophisticated.

At the time of the offending he said she was just 17 and is very remorseful for what she had done. She had a place available for her at Hazelwood House, in Bath Road, where she would be helped.

Imposing a suspended sentence, Judge Euan Ambrose said: “This was a piece of yobbish bullying. The theft was part and parcel of it but an afterthought.

“This was you behaving in a bullying way to children who were younger than you and smaller than you: you are an imposing physical form.”

He jailed her for 12 months, suspended for two years, and told her she would be under supervision for that period. She must live at Hazelwood House for a year and observe an 8pm to 8am curfew for six months.

Her 14-year-old co-defendant admitted perverting the course of justice and affray and was remitted to the youth court at an earlier hearing.