A woman with HIV who bit a store clerk during a robbery in Boyle County, Kentucky has been given a 12-year prison sentence.

VS pleaded guilty to robbery and wanton endangerment last month in exchange for the sentence. Because of her medical condition, she was initially charged with attempted murder.

Police say she took cash from the register at the Chill Quick Stop Convenience Store in Danville last September. The clerk spotted the robbery and tried to stop her. Surveillance video showed her biting the clerk while screaming that she had AIDS. The clerk has not tested positive for HIV.

A woman who claimed to be HIV-positive after biting a convenience store clerk during a robbery has been indicted by a Boyle County grand jury.

VS, 29, of Danville was indicted on one count of first-degree robbery, a Class B felony punishable by 10 to 20 years in prison.

The indictment says that on Sept. 11 S used force to injure Easter Bowles “while in the course of a theft from Chills,” a convenience store in south Danville. She shouted “I have AIDS!” as she left the scene, police said at the time.

A test later determined that S does have the virus that causes AIDS, police said.

S was initially charged by police with attempted murder and wanton endangerment as well as robbery. But the indictment makes no mention of those charges.

There have been extremely rare cases of transmission by severe human bites in which the HIV-positive person’s saliva contained visible blood, according to the American Red Cross.

S was still in the Boyle County jail yesterday afternoon in lieu of a bond. She could be arraigned in Boyle Circuit Court as early as Dec. 4.