HIV-positive woman gets jail for biting cop

You just can't pay police officers enough for the job they do. I'm so glad the judge took this assault on a police officer serious and sentenced the woman to 3 to 6 years in state prison.

"It was six months of a living nightmare for this officer," the prosecutor told the judge after the officer had to endure six months of blood tests to make sure he wasn't infected with the AIDS virus.

From a story by Carl Hessler Jr. in today's edition of The Pottstown Mercury:

NORRISTOWN — A Pottstown woman who bit a borough police officer and then boasted to police that she has HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is headed to state prison for assaulting the officer during a disturbance.

Shayata Rosatta Edwards, 30, of Walnut Street, was sentenced in Montgomery County Court to three to six years in the State Correctional Institution at Muncy after she was convicted of charges of aggravated assault and recklessly endangering another person in connection with the March 14, 2008, altercation that occurred while police attempted to arrest her for a disturbance.

Judge Thomas P. Rogers, who rendered the verdict after a one-day, non-jury trial, also ordered Edwards to complete two years' probation after she's paroled from prison.

By convicting Edwards of aggravated assault, the judge found that Edwards attempted or intentionally or recklessly caused serious bodily injury to the police officer under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.

Read the full story at the newspaper's Web site.