Consider what criminal liability arises.

Magdalena is spending the week at the house of two of her friends, an elderly couple she calls ‘Grandmother’ and ‘Grandfather’ even though they are not her actual grandparents. Vish is a nurse who comes over twice daily to help Grandmother with her medications and to take her blood pressure. It is 8pm, and Vish has just arrived and has gone upstairs to Grandmother’s bedroom, where Grandmother is waiting for him. Magdalena goes out to do some gardening in the back garden. It has barely been 2-3 minutes and Magdalena sees a figure just near the kitchen window. She looks upstairs to Grandmother’s bedroom window and sees Vish’s back. Frightened and thinking that there was a dangerous intruder in the kitchen, she shouts: ‘I’ve got a gun, get out of here or I’ll shoot!’ She then grabs her shovel, approaches the kitchen window, and hits it with all her might hoping that this will scare the intruder into fleeing from the front door. The window smashes to pieces; the broken glass causes the presumed intruder a deep cut, and he lies on the floor bleeding. Magdalena rushes back in through the back door. Seeing the presumed intruder lying on the floor holding a bread knife, she remembers that Grandmother hides her most expensive jewellery in a hidden part of the bread box. The presumed intruder then grabs a metal bucket from the floor and throws it at Magdalena who suffers a bruise. Magdalena then hits the presumed intruder with the shovel several times, causing significant bruises. As it later turns out, the figure in the kitchen was in fact Vish who went down to get some water and a slice of bread for Grandmother, and the figure Magdalena saw in the bedroom was Grandmother herself.

Dazed, Vish recovers himself still holding the breadknife. Grandfather suddenly appears. He is very drunk, having been drinking alcohol alone in the sitting room for a few hours. Seeing Vish with the breadknife, Grandfather fails to recognize him and thinks Vish is an intruder about todamage a valuable painting hanging in the house by slashing it with the knife. To distract Vish and repel his feared attack on the painting, Grandfather picks up a mobile phone that is lying on the table and smashes it on the floor. The phone, which belongs to Vish, is broken beyond repair.

Consider what criminal liability arises.

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