'˜Dangerous' Obi Wan Kenobi guilty of prison attacks

Tiffany Scott, formerly known as Andrew Burns of Kinglassie, was found guilty of the outrages today after a trial which was held in her absence at because she refused to leave her cell at Saughton Prison, Edinburgh, where she is now being held, to attend.

Falkirk Sheriff Court heard that the incidents occurred between August and October 2015 while Scott, was being held in a segregation unit in Clackmannanshire’s top-security Glenochil Prison, where she is serving an indeterminate sentence.

The court was told that at the time, prison staff were complying with her requests that she should be known within the jail as Mr Mighty Almighty.

Scott, who also called herself Obi Wan Kenobi, covered herself in excrement which she also smeared round her cell door and over the observation port, preventing anyone from seeing in, and staged a self-hanging, rending her tear-proof clothing into trips and making a noose, which she suspended from a sprinkler valve.

Warders – wearing full-body protective clothing, including helmet, visor, and gloves, and carrying 4ft by 2ft Plexiglass shields amid fears that Scott was armed with a medical cannula she had ripped from her body during hospital treatment – had to burst into her cell to save her life.

Giving evidence, prison officer Paul Lockie, 45, said the incident occurred on August 19, 2015.

Scott later repaid him by an assault – throwing a cup of liquid, of an unknown kind but possibly urine – at him.

She assaulted the jail nurse, Fiona Parker, in a consultation room, by hurling a chair which struck her on the body, and another officer, Kenneth Hilton, by punching him in the face as Mr Hilton sat at a desk doing paperwork.

In further incidents, she spat at another officer, Adam Sneddon, and tried to bite him, during an ambulance journey between Glenochil Prison and the Forth Valley Royal Hospital, 14 miles away, and threw her dinner and plate at prison officer Vikki Hamilton, hitting her on the head.

The court heard that most prisoners would have been unable to rip up the special “anti-ligature” clothing that Scott was wearing in the segregation unit.

Mr Lockie said: “It’s supposed to be untearable, but Tiffany could rip it up no problem.”

Fellow prison officer Colin Park, 41, said Scott had told staff she had “weapons secreted”, such as razor blades and needles, with which she could have harmed them, which was why he and his fellow officers had to wear full protective clothing to enter her cell and cut the noose from her neck during her attempted hanging.

He said she was blue in the face and he had to use a special tool to remove the tight ligature.

He said: “I lifted Mr Almighty, as he was then known, into the rest position, and called for medical attention.”

He told Scott’s defence agent, Dick Sandeman: “I wouldn’t say Mr Almighty was predictable. That wouldn’t be the word. Mr Almighty was very persistent in carrying out his behaviours. Whereas other prisoners would not have attempted it [tearing the ‘tear-proof’ clothing], he would.”

Mr Park said that the fire suppression valve that Scott had used as a ligature point was damaged, and had sprayed water all over the cell.

After hearing a day and a half of evidence, Sheriff Derek Livingston found Scott (26), guilty of five charges of assault and one of criminal damage.

He deferred sentence until next Monday for Scott to be given an opportunity to leave her cell voluntarily and be brought from Saughton to be sentenced.

He warned, however, that if she did not, he would issue a warrant for her arrest so she can be forcibly brought to court and sentenced next Tuesday.

The case was initially due to be heard at Alloa earlier this year, but was dropped after an internal report warned Scott was “too dangerous” to be tried in public in the Victorian court house there.

After an outcry from prison officers’ union officials, it was re-raised in Falkirk, one of the highest-security court complexes in Scotland.

Scott is one of only some 100 offenders in Scotland subject to an Order for Lifelong Restriction (OLR), meaning she will only be released when she is no longer considered an “unmanageable risk to public safety”.

She has a string of conviction for crimes including assaults, vandalism and resisting arrests.

According to prison documents, she has also been known to bite open her own veins and spray blood on other inmates.

In 2010, she assaulted a nurse when he escaped a hospital in Crewe, Cheshire.

Four years ago, she also admitted stalking a 13-year-old girl by sending her letters from her cell at Polmont Prison, near Falkirk.

She was sentenced to 14 months and given her OLR at the High Court in Glasgow.