A 30-year-old woman from Deline, N.W.T., was sentenced to five and a half months in jail for assault in territorial court Friday.

Joyce Neyelle had pleaded guilty to assaulting two elders and to assaulting a police officer in two separate incidents.

Joyce Neyelle of Deline, N.W.T., is led by RCMP into the Yellowknife courthouse on Friday. She was sentenced to five and a half months in jail for assaulting two elders and a police officer. (CBC)

The officer who arrested Neyelle had described her as "one of the worst people to deal with in Deline," but only when she was drinking.

He said she was violent and a danger to the community when drunk but that, when sober, she was polite, friendly and funny.

In one incident he said she threw her shoe at a police officer, knocking off his hat and glasses and leaving a shoe imprint on his face that lasted a week.

That was following her arrest after she refused to leave the home of a local elder.

In another incident she backhanded an elderly woman while she slept, and punched another man in the face with her fist.

Judge Brian Bruser called her childhood "horrific," but said it appeared she could not separate herself from alcohol and when under the influence she posed a safety risk to others.

Neyelle nodded her head while looking at the judge when he explained that in the end alcohol was the culprit, but that liquor didn't commit the assaults or take the first drink, she did.

Neyelle appeared shocked when she was sentenced to five and a half months in jail and a year of probation.

The judge also handed her a firearms restriction and an order to provide her DNA for the national database.

She will serve her time at the women’s correctional centre in Fort Smith.