Inverness Sheriff Court hears prisoner under life sentence lashed out at Raigmore Hospital
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A man on a lifelong restriction of liberty order injured a prison officer when he was taken to Raigmore Hospital after swallowing razor blades.
Inverness Sheriff Court heard Stephen Ross was at Porterfield Prison in Inverness in January.
He had been taken to Raigmore Hospital’s accident and emergency unit after concerns that he had been self-harming and swallowed a quantity of blades.
Depute fiscal Niall Macdonald told the court that he was brought into a cubicle while he was in a highly agitated state and struggled with the prison officer, hurting his wrist with the handcuffs.
He also pulled the officer forcibly, causing their heads to collide.
The prison officer sustained a broken tooth and cut lip.
Ross (28), now an inmate at Shotts Prison, admitted culpable and reckless conduct at the hospital on January 29.
His solicitor, Jeremy O’Neil, said he was eight years into a lifelong restriction of liberty order and was taken to hospital saying he had swallowed razors.
“He accepts he had indeed swallowed razors to harm himself and no-one else,” he said.
He said the incident in the hospital was an emotional outburst, for which Ross apologised.
In 2011 at the High Court in Edinburgh, Ross was sentenced to three years imprisonment and told he would only be released if the parole board thought it was safe to do so.
Then aged 20, he had stabbed and slashed two complete strangers in Inverness because he was in a bad mood.
The High Court heard he began his career of violence when he was just 10 years old and had been in and out of secure schools and young offenders’ institutions since, notching up a total of 110 offences at that point.
He had been released early from a sentence for a serious bottle attack when he pounced on his two victims within minutes of each other.
Stewart admitted slashing one man and stabbing another in the abdomen.
Sheriff Margaret Neilson said at Inverness Sheriff Court on Tuesday that, given Ross’s circumstances, she could do no more than jail him for nine months, to run concurrently with his existing sentence.
