A Selby woman was today facing jail for attacking a supermarket security guard who asked her to take her hood down.

Maya Wardle bit David Haynes on the hand so hard he bled and punched him in the face in the Morrisons store in Selby, York Crown Court heard.

He had just asked her for the second time to observe the store’s policy that people wearing hoodies should have the hood down.

Wardle, 30, of Cockret Court, Selby, denied a charge of causing actual bodily harm and claimed in the witness box she had reacted in the way she had because she had been raped in the past by another man.

But the jury convicted her by a majority verdict of causing actual bodily harm. Then Judge Michael Murphy told them she had an “extensive criminal record for offences of dishonesty and also assaulting police officers”.

She was also on a community sentence for criminal damage when she attacked Mr Haynes.

Her record included linked offences of shoplifting in Boots and three assaults on police officers in 2006 when she had bit two officers and scratched one while being restrained.

Judge Murphy told her: “Given your poor response to community orders and your previous convictions I will be considering custody in your case.”

He adjourned sentence until March 23 while probation officers prepared a report on her and released her on bail on condition that she does not go to the Morrisons store at Market Cross.

Prosecution witnesses described how Wardle had initially lowered her hood in the Market Cross store, then put it back up again. When Mr Haynes again asked her to lower it, she attacked him. Morrisons employee Mark Reynolds told the jury Wardle was “going hell for leather, trying to get at David”.

After being told to calm down, she again attacked Mr Haynes.

The jury heard Wardle had made a rape complaint to police in 2009, but the prosecuting authorities had decided there was “insufficient evidence” to take the matter further.

She claimed the rape had left her afraid to leave her house and subject to panic attacks. She also feared the “rapist” would track her down.