An HIV positive woman who jabbed a 12-year-old boy with a needle filled with infected bodily fluids after the lad flushed her drugs stash down the toilet is being hunted by police.
Jacqueline O’Neil faces a lengthy jail term after she “culpably and recklessly” pricked the youngster, who cannot be named for legal reasons, with the uncapped needle at her home in Dundee.
She was due at Dundee Sheriff Court to face sentencing on Thursday — but failed to turn up.
Her lawyer told the court her father had appeared, but O’Neil was nowhere to be seen.
Sheriff Lorna Drummond QC issued a warrant for her arrest.
Dundee Sheriff Court earlier heard the boy had turned up at O’Neil’s address with one of O’Neil’s relatives.
The lad gave evidence at a proof in mitigation hearing to establish the exact circumstances of the incident.
He told the court O’Neil was clearly under the influence of drugs and was surrounded by drug paraphenalia when he found her in the living room with a syringe stuck in her leg.
O’Neil, giving evidence herself, admitted she had taken heroin but claimed the boy had “totally fabricated” the circumstances leading up to him being pricked and branded him a “liar”.
Giving evidence through a CCTV link, the boy said he had taken a foil wrap containing heroin and had flushed it down the toilet.
He said: “She tried to slap it out of my hand.
“There was a needle sitting on a pillowcase and when I came back in she started waving at me.
“It hit me on the hand.”
The boy said it had gone in so deep he had to physically extract it himself before leaving.
O’Neil claimed that she had been trying to protect the boy when he was stuck by the needle.
In her version of events O’Neil claimed the boy had been handed the needle by the other adult and that she was trying to take it from him when he was stuck.
Depute Fiscal Saima Rasheed said the boy had suffered no ill-effects as a result of the incident and had not become infected.
O’Neil, 32, of Byron Crescent, Dundee, pleaded guilty on indictment to a charge of culpable and reckless conduct and a further charge of assault.
