THE Broadwell woman who battered and beat a retired landscape gardener to death been found guilty of manslaughter.

On Friday the jury of three woman and nine men unanimously found Amanda Louise Howard, 46, of Edinburgh Place guilty of manslaughter after she had attacked 64-year-old Gerry Nott to death at his Queensway home, causing him fatal head injuries.

Bristol Crown Court heard how Howard had shaken Mr Nott 'like a rag doll' before punching the grandfather a number of times on the head and kicking him to the floor on October 25 last year, and leaving him to die while she and the other witnesses continued drinking at her own house, a short walk away. Melanie Powell and Scott Woodley made Mr Nott comfortable by putting a make-shift cushion under his head and covering him with a blanket,

But two pathologists agreed, in cross-examination by defending barrister John Burton QC, that the fatal injury sustained Mr Nott could have been as a result of a fall.

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