A "high-risk" prisoner slashed another inmate's throat with an improvised knife, a court has heard.

Daniel Illingworth, 28, was serving a sentence at Prison Holme House in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, when he attacked fellow prisoner Stephen Holman.

He hid a blade melted into the handle of a toothbrush and launched the assault when the men left their cells for their evening meal at the jail.

Illingworth walked from his cell wearing shorts, which is not allowed in the prison during mealtimes, and refused to go back to change when an officer instructed him to do so.

He walked towards Holman, jumped on his back and appeared to push him, Teesside Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Rachel Masters said a prison officer saw at least two blows as she shouted at him to stop and activated alarm bells, Teesside Live reports.

Ms Masters said: "As she got closer, she could see in his hand what looked like a white plastic handled implement, something like a toothbrush or cutlery handle.

"Distinctively it had a blade on the end of it."

The officer backed off and asked Illingworth to go back to his cell to drop the weapon, which he did.

Holman suffered three wounds across his throat, to the lower right of his chin and behind his ear, which were treated with glue and strips.

He said he did not know why the attack happened.

The assault, just before 5pm on July 13 last year, was captured on CCTV footage which was played to a judge.

Illingworth, whose address was listed in court as Holme House Prison, initially said he did not know anything about the violence.

He said he had severe mental health problems and claimed Holman injured himself.

He later admitted wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm.

Illingworth was given a 10-year sentence for robbery in 2011 and for wounding with intent, wounding and unauthorised possession of a knife in prison in 2018.

He committed the latest assault just three months after receiving the 2018 sentence.

David Comb, mitigating, said Illingworth had a "complex psychiatric and social background".

He said a report referred to Illingworth's mobility in prison and his "sense of humiliation, compounded by his personality and hypersensitivity as well as paranoid misinterpretation".

A psychiatrist suggested Illingworth posed a high risk of future violence.

Judge Stephen Ashurst told Illingworth: "You took the blade to his face and neck.

"In the event the injury sustained by Stephen Holman were a good deal less serious than it might otherwise have been.

"But your position, I'm afraid, is made serious by your dreadful record of offending.

"You have very little self-awareness of your problems and the capacity to try and deal with them in the future."

He ruled Illingworth was a dangerous offender posing risk of serious harm to the public "and to serving prisoners in particular".

He said the prisoner did not currently meet the criteria for a life sentence but warned him that he could be given once if he carried on offending.

Illingworth was given a 13-year extended sentence.

This will be an eight-year custodial term, of which he must serve two thirds before the Parole Board decide whether he can be released early, plus five years' extended licence.

Continue reading here:
'High-risk' prisoner stabbed fellow inmate in the throat with makeshift knife - Mirror Online