Officers took 35 minutes to arrive after she was threatened with chainsaws and knives
She was pelted with rocks while a youth threatened to slit her throat and slaughter her cattle.
Having confronted travellers cutting down trees on her farm, terminally-ill Tracy St Clair Pearce found herself subjected to a terrifying ordeal.
Some of the group pelted her with rocks while a youth threatened to slit her throat and slaughter her cattle.
When she dialled 999 she expected the full weight of the law to be on her side.
Instead, however, police officers criticised her for inflaming the situation and confiscated her legally held shotguns – even though they had been locked away in a cabinet at home throughout the incident.
Yesterday, the 50-year-old accused police of causing her ‘harassment and distress’ when she should have been given protection.
‘I’ve been treated like a criminal,’ said Miss St Clair Pearce, who has been given months to live after breast cancer spread to her spine.
The incident blew up after around 18 caravans set up camp illegally in a field owned by Colchester Council last Thursday.
Miss St Clair Pearce, who lives on the adjoining Seven Saints Rare Breeds farm with her brother, Stuart, had a good-natured conversation with one traveller who assured her they would be no trouble and would move on within a couple of days.
But at 7pm on Good Friday she was spraying weeds on the 34-acre farm, where she has ten rare Shetland cattle and three horses, when she heard a chainsaw and found four boys felling trees for firewood.
‘I started shouting “Get out” but they just stood there in my field,’ she said. ‘I said I would spray them with the weed killer and one in a red T-shirt, who was about 14, went ballistic. The language coming out of his mouth was unbelievable.
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