A former care home manager has revealed how she was 'ostracised' by her community after she was wrongly arrested for injuring two teenagers with an air rifle - despite officers seizing a weapon from her neighbour as she was led away.
Mandy French's nightmare began when she gently remonstrated with a group of boys who were playing on fragile sand dunes outside her home in the seaside town of Hemsby, Norfolk.
Shortly afterwards, police descended on the area and she was arrested for shooting two of the boys, both aged 13 - one of whom needed hospital treatment.
She remained under suspicion on police bail for three months until next-door neighbour Jason Davis, 51, a convicted paedophile, was arrested and charged for the offence. He has now been jailed for two years.
Distraught Ms French, 55, said: 'Officers searched my house and took a replica blunderbuss musket-type pirate's gun, which used to be an ashtray, which they have now actually returned to me.
