Mairead Clabby’s life was turned upside down after she was assaulted as a volunteer police officer during a violent encounter at the pubMairead, 36, suffered years of dehabilitating pain after she was assaulted as a volunteer police officer aged just 23

It started as an ordinary night at the pub, but would leave Mairead Clabby changed forever.

The then 23-year-old volunteer police officer had gone for drinks with some colleagues on the Wirral in December 2012. Despite being off-duty, the group of officers were called into action when a violent fight broke out between a couple. The woman was knocked unconscious.

But as Mairead called for medical assistance while her colleagues arrested him, the woman woke up and tried to force her way back to his side. Mairead stopped her for her own safety, but she became vicious, kicking Mairead in the stomach and dragging her to the floor before pulling her hair out and throttling her.

“It took three officers to restrain her in the end,” Mairead recalled. “She pulled my hair and banged my head against the floor. I was left in a lot of pain.

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“I remember trying to get one of my colleagues who I was giving a lift home to leave because I could feel the atmosphere in the pub turning,” Mairead added. “But sadly I didn’t leave early enough.”

Mairead said she went through a period of grieving for her pre-injured body

The young officer was left with what she initially believed to be muscular injuries to her neck and shoulder. But despite multiple rounds of physiotherapy over the five years following the assault, nothing was improving.

“It was making me quite sick at times,” she told the M.E.N. “I thought there could be something else at play but I didn’t ever have any scans.”

As time went on, she began to realise she was becoming weaker. “I couldn’t lift things in the office, my arm was getting shaky, I was getting quite weak and it was getting to a point where after my shift I was having to have a rest for four or five hours, get up for a little bit, and then go back to bed,” she said.

“I knew something was going wrong. I was bumping into things, I wasn’t able to write and type properly and I was losing feeling down like my right arm.”

Mairead went back to her GP and was initially recommended another round of physiotherapy. But she decided to consult a different doctor who referred her for an MRI scan.

The test revealed four herniated disks in her neck and a chiari malformation – a condition in which brain tissue extends into the spinal canal, which can result from severe whiplash.

She is running the Great Manchester Run for the Walton Centre this weekend

“At that point I was the illest I’d ever been,” Mairead recalled. “I had put on around seven stone and I wasn’t really mobile. I had been a competitive athlete before the assault, but I was struggling doing walks around the block. It was a huge adjustment and it was really getting me down.”

She was referred to the Walton Centre, a specialist neurology hospital in Liverpool, where she was offered surgery to remove one of the affected disks and replace it with a graft.

“It was life-changing straight away,” she said. “As soon as my feet hit the floor walking around the ward I haven’t really stopped. I lost about three stone in three months just from walking again.”

With help from the Police Treatment Centre Mairead began to slowly rehabilitate, and around a year ago took up running – a sport she had once been competitive in. Now, coached by Olympic athletes Eilish McColgan and Michael Rimmer, she is slowly regaining fitness and strength.

“Things are so different to how they were,” she told the M.E.N. “I’m still on medication for my nerve pain and I’m still under the Walton Centre but the operation was really a turning point.”

Mairead will be running the AJ Bell Great Manchester Run on Sunday to fundraise for the Walton Centre. She said she was ‘excited’ to take on the challenge and run alongside Greater Manchester star Keely Hodgkinson, who will be starting the race.

“I’m really looking forward to taking part and raising money and giving back to the Walton Center because they’ve obviously done so much for me,” she said. “I think the atmosphere is going to be great!”

You can donate to Mairead’s fundraiser here.