A British woman who blasted loud Ed Sheeran hits to annoy her neighbors late at night has been arrested and jailed eight weeks for disturbing the peace. She was accused of playing the singer’s Shape of You on repeat at maximum volume to deliberately annoy them.
36-year-old Sonia Bryce was sentenced to jail for breaching the noise injunction, according to The Sun.
The court heard that the Walsall mother-of-three deafened her neighbors in the semi-detached house by creating a “wholly unacceptable level of disturbance through loud noise involving music, shouting, swearing, and banging – time and time again.”
Her landlords at the Landlords Walsall Housing Group previously secured a court order barring her from being a nuisance.
She was arrested for breaching the injunction and jailed for six weeks. Upon her release in February, Bryce returned to her old ways and played the music louder still until she landed back in Walsall County Court.
Speaking to the court, her neighbor Clare Tidmarsh says that the family kept a “detailed diary of events” cataloguing her Ed Sheeran-based harassment, and installed a CCTV to keep her actions in check.
She told the judge that her family could no longer tolerate the living conditions, which had become untenable because of Bryce and her family, and her “continuous stream of visitors.”
Clare says her family had to leave their home just to get away from Bryce’s racket despite her own love of Ed Sheeran. “I used to like Ed Sheeran but I’ve taken him off my playlist,” she said. “It drove us crazy.”
Defending herself in court, Bryce says that she “doesn’t even like” Ed Sheeran’s music and accused her neighbor of goading her into being a pest. The judge ruled against her and defended the Tidmarsh family as “perfectly decent and respectable people” who were unfortunate enough to live next door to her.
“You must learn that you should behave as a reasonable and responsible adult, and not make life for your neighbors the misery that you have,” declared Judge Philip Gregory. “You have displayed nothing but violent animosity towards your neighbor, and I am quite convinced that you do not care.”
“Everybody is entitled to live in a degree of peace and quiet with the usual give and take of society, but you do not behave like a civilized person, and you have got to learn that you will.”
There’s no word on how Ed Sheeran feels about his music being used to harass people.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.
