Botox hope for paralysed mum

Yob broke Claire’s neck in drunken rage.

A mum left paralysed when a yob broke her neck is praying a series of Botox injections will help restore the use of her hands.

Claire Hilton, 30, suffered a broken neck when thug Christopher Towers, 25, punched her in a drunken rage over a spilt drink.

Miss Hilton, from Sunderland, has been left confined to a wheelchair, barely able to move her hands and arms after breaking three bones in her neck and suffering severe spinal cord damage.

But the mum-of-one has been given new hope she will be able to improve movement in her hands after undergoing Botox injections.

She said: “I’ve been getting Botox in my hands. The left is worse than the right I can’t open my fingers.

“The Botox helps to open the muscles in my wrists.”

Miss Hilton had a series of injections at hospital last week ahead of surgery next year aimed at improving movement in her hands.

She said: “It will straighten my wrists and the doctors are hoping it will give me the use of two fingers back.

“I can’t do anything like comb my hair or use a knife and fork.”

Claire, a former telesales worker who describes 13-year-old son Callum as a lifeline, was forced to move into a bungalow near her parents in Sunderland after the June 2011 attack.

She’ll be disabled for the rest of her life but hopes the treatment will restore some independence.

She said: “At the minute I can’t get up and walk unless somebody helps me. I use a Zimmer frame and somebody has to be with me all the time.”

Claire was visiting a pub in Boldon, South Tyneside, with friends when a pint of cider was accidentally knocked over, marking the dress of Towers’s mum Lynn Flaherty.

Flaherty, Towers and his girlfriend Kelly McKone flew into a rage and were ordered to leave the pub.

But they waited outside and when the group left McKone struck Claire and Flaherty hit one of her friends.

Then Towers punched Claire on the left side of her face which caused her to hit a wall and fall to the ground.

Towers was jailed for three-and-a-half years in January 2012 but was released on weekend licence 15 months later.