A CHILD killer from Dreghorn carried out a string of violent attacks against prison officers in jail, a court has heard.

Lifer Jordan McCready fought with guards at privately run Addiewell prison where he was serving a minimum 14-year sentence for kicking a teenager to death.

The 26-year-old, who has since been moved to Perth Prison, was said to have shown “extreme strength and a high pain threshold” as prison officers tried to subdue him.

He fractured the hyoid bone in an officer’s throat by punching him during a struggle, Livingston Sheriff Court was told.

McCready also pushed a female prison officer’s head down and repeatedly punched her on the head and body giving her a bloody lip and bruising to her eye and cheek.

Another officer needed to have a tetanus injection and a course of antibiotics after McCready bit him on the arm. He also head-butted another unfortunate officer as wardens tried to control him.

Several prison custody officers were threatened by him as he ran at them brandishing a makeshift spear made from a broken mop handle.

He also risked starting a riot by climbing over a balcony railing and taking off his top as custody officers tried to persuade him to come down.

McCready appeared for sentence on Monday [October 25] after pleading guilty to a series of assaults, assault to severe injury, causing disturbances and possessing an offensive weapon in prison.

His lawyer Alan Jackson described the accused’s behaviour as “rather bizarre” and played down the severity of the injury to the officer’s throat.

He added: “That said, it doesn’t excuse the behaviour of Mr McCready and he doesn’t seek to do that. What he did was way over the score and he very much regrets behaving in that way.”

He said McCready had become frustrated at new prison rules being introduced to control the spread of Covid at the West Lothian prison.

He added: “He’s a man who’s been in prison for a number of years and things were changing daily as to when he’d be allowed out of his cell and that was causing him a great deal of concern.”

He said McCready had been in care since his youth, had become involved in petty crime and had spent so much of his adult life in the “revolving door” of prison that he was now institutionalised.

Sheriff Susan Craig said a custodial sentence was the only appropriate way to deal with the case and imposed a ‘cumulo’ sentence of three years imprisonment from Monday’s date.

McCready, from Dreghorn, murdered innocent 13-year-old Jon Wilson in a random street attack while off his head on booze and Valium in 2011.

The killer’s savage attack was so vicious he bruised his own feet during the brutal onslaught.
Jon, a second-year pupil at Kilmarnock Academy, suffered irreversible brain damage and died the next day.