A 49-YEAR-OLD police officer has alleged that a woman she had previously been in a relationship with assaulted her in her own home over a year ago, leaving her afraid she was going to die.

Linda Totten has claimed that, during the confrontation in her kitchen, 48-year-old Dorianna Lehmann threw hot oil from a frying pan over her and warned her that she would burn down her house, also home to 40 birds, three cats and a dog.

Lehmann, of Dublin Road, Enniskillen, strenuously denies charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, making threats to kill and also making threats to damage a property on September 29, 2015.

Evidence was heard from her alleged victim during the first day of a contested hearing in the case at Fermanagh Magistrates Court on Monday afternoon.

As Miss Totten walked into court to take the witness stand, the accused remained behind a curtain in the dock so the two women could not see each other.

Frequently overcome by emotion, Miss Totten told the court that the defendant had been a friend and they had used to be in a relationship.

However, she claimed that she had ended it some time prior to the incident due to “domestic violence issues”.

On the evening in question, the alleged injured party said she had been cooking in her kitchen when Lehmann entered in an “agitated” state and started shouting at her.

Before this, Miss Totten claimed that she had witnessed an argument between the defendant and her current partner outside the house.

She claimed that, after coming into the kitchen, the defendant began screaming directly in her face and began poking her in the neck and chest, which was making her “feel dizzy”.

Miss Totten told the court that she urged Miss Lehmann to stop, but her request was ignored.

She claimed that the defendant warned that if she “ruined it” [her current relationship] for her, she would make sure she paid for it.

“She said she would burn down the house with me and the kids in it,” Miss Totten alleged.

She then explained to the court that the ‘kids’ referred to were her 40 birds, including finches, canaries and cockatoos, three cats and one dog.

The witness alleged that Lehmann then lifted up the pan with the cooking oil, leaving her “terrified”.

“She continued to shout at me and hold it over my head. I looked her in the eye and I didn’t recognise the person that I knew as Dorianna. She wasn’t there. It was just cold.

“I realised I couldn’t get through to her and I thought there was a very real possibility I was going to die,” she said.

Miss Totten alleged that when the oil was poured over her she leant to her left to protect her dog, causing the oil to spill over her right hand side.

She later told the court that she had sustained burn injuries to her upper right arm, her upper right leg and hand, as well as bruising to her neck and chest.

During a lengthy cross-examination of the witness, defence counsel Joe McCann told the court that his client disputed ever laying a hand on the alleged victim on any date.

After confirming to the barrister that she was a police officer trained in restraint techniques, Mr McCann asked whether she had attempted to use those techniques during the incident.

She replied that she hadn’t.

Mr McCann told the court that the defendant denied throwing hot oil over her alleged victim.

He repeatedly questioned Miss Totten on why she hadn’t sought medical treatment until around eight-and-a-half hours after allegedly being “scalded” and also why she hadn’t mentioned the hot oil to either the 999 operator or the police officers who attended the scene.

Asking her if she had felt a “sharp, intense and immediate pain”, she replied: “I felt something, but I didn’t think about it. It had hit me, but my immediate thought was to escape.”

Miss Totten further alleged that she couldn’t recall the conversation with the 999 operator as she was “very frightened”, but believed she had said she was in fear of her life.

After she confirmed in the course of the cross-examination that she had joined the police in August 1992, Mr McCann questioned why she had thrown out the t-shirt she had been wearing several days later, when, as a police officer, she would have known it would be an important piece of evidence.

Claiming that she had been stressed and in shock, she told the court: “I was thinking as a member of the public, not necessarily as a police officer.”

Just before the conclusion of Monday’s hearing, Mr McCann said that the case had previously been listed for contest in August of this year.

The barrister said that, in the run-up to that hearing, Miss Totten had contacted the victim support unit of the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) and requested that riot police attend the court because Dorianna Lehmann’s father was the “king of the German gypsies”.

In response, she insisted that she had received threats from the defendant’s family to withdraw her complaint and had reported these threats to the police in October or November 2015.

However, the barrister told the court that there was no record of either of the police officers she had named being informed of the alleged threats.

The case is due to resume next week.