A convicted killer who knifed a teenager to death while he was on bail has threatened prison officers with scissors during an attempted escape from hospital, a court was told.
Ross Anderson was found guilty of the culpable homicide of 17-year-old Adam Paton, from Brechin, following a seven-day trial at the High Court in Aberdeen in 2009.
The 31-year-old, whose drug addict mum gave birth to him in prison, viciously stabbed his friend’s head and body in Montrose on April 24 2008.
The victim was wounded through the heart by the then 16-year-old during a street attack on the town’s North Street following a row.
In May last year, while serving an extended sentence of 15-and-a-half years, the prisoner was taken to St John’s Hospital in Livingston, West Lothian.
Anderson was high on drugs as he grabbed a doctor’s scissors off the table in a treatment room and ordered prison guards to unlock his handcuffs and set him free.
He shouted at them: “You know what I’m in for. Give me the f****** keys!”
But the prison officers managed to restrain Anderson and seize the scissors from him, depute fiscal Roshni Joshi told Livingston Sheriff Court.
Anderson, a prisoner at HMP Addiewell, pleaded guilty on indictment to behaving in a threatening and aggressive manner and uttering threats and demands at the two prison officers on 11 May 2021.
He was sentenced to 15 months for the latest offence, although the court was told he had already been recalled to prison for breaching his licence conditions and would not qualify for parole until June or July 2023.
Alan Smith, defending, claimed Anderson had suffered from long periods of depression in custody punctured by incidences of self-harm and substance abuse.
He added: “He had consumed a significant amount of Etizolam so his recollection of events in hospital is hazy, but he entirely accepts the Crown’s narrative”.
‘Emotionally traumatic’ life
Sheriff Peter Hammond told Anderson via a CCTV link to prison that only a custodial sentence was appropriate.
However, the sheriff said he was prepared to make it run concurrently with Anderson’s present sentence rather than consecutively.
Anderson, who was originally charged with murder in 2008, was found guilty of the culpable homicide of 17-year-old Adam Paton following a seven-day trial at the High Court in Aberdeen in 2009.
It later emerged that before he attacked his friend in Montrose on 24 April 2008 he had been released on bail – for the second time – just weeks after being charged with a catalogue of violent crimes.
Anderson was arrested in August 2007 for assaulting and robbing a woman of cash and a mobile phone.
And just days before killing Mr Paton, he was freed on bail from Rossie House, Montrose, after appearing at Arbroath Sheriff Court over allegations of breach of the peace and vandalism.
Sentencing Anderson for causing Mr Paton’s death, judge Lord Carloway told him he accepted that he had had an “emotionally traumatic” life.
He was born in Corntonvale Prison, Stirling, to a mother then addicted to heroin and an abusive father who had himself died in police custody.
The judge said: “It is hard to imagine a more deprived and tragic start to life.
“However, it is equally clear that your adoptive parents tried very hard to compensate for that early start by providing you with a comfortable lifestyle and the potential for a good education and future life.
“Whatever the psychological reasons for it, you spurned their attempts to help you and engaged in a life of substance, drug and alcohol abuse and, ultimately, crime.
“This lifestyle culminated in the death of another young man at the start of his adult life.”
‘A continuing danger to the public’
He said that had it not been for the defence of provocation, there was little doubt that the repeated blows which Anderson had delivered with a knife, especially those to the front of the chest through the heart and liver and to the back to the lung, would have to have been regarded as murderous.
He added: “These blows were struck by you, having consciously removed a kitchen knife from the flat for use in the street.
“The court cannot but regard this culpable homicide as a particularly serious one. Despite your youth, you are a continuing danger to members of the public.”
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