(Image: Cumbria Police)
A long-term inmate squirted a mix of urine and faeces at an officer escorting another prisoner in a jail’s segregation unit.
Carl Losh claimed he was aiming the “potting”, prison slang for the attack, at the inmate being escorted to his cell at Frankland Prison, Durham, on May 5 last year.
But Durham Crown Court heard that the liquid sprayed one of the escorting officers.
Prosecutor Dan Wilberforce said it hit the officer’s neck but, thankfully, missed his face and mouth.
Losh, 34, admitted administering a noxious substance, intending to injure, aggrieve or annoy.
The court was told he is serving a 13-year sentence for attacks on women in his native Carlisle, imposed in 2018, but had a 56-month sentence added for a boiling water attack on another Frankland inmate in February 2024.
Losh’s counsel, Brian Mark, said there was no dispute over his guilty plea, but he said the defendant insisted he had not meant to hit the officer.
“He has never had an altercation with that officer, but he has had an altercation with the prisoner who was being escorted.
“He was trying to hit that prisoner he had a dispute with and not the officer.
“He apologises to the officer, and the officer accepts it was an accident.
“It could be described as ‘transferred malice’.
“He’s regretful of that.
“He has said to me it won’t be repeated.”
Judge Jo Kidd said: “The fact of the matter was that he would have had a clear sight that the prisoner would be accompanied by an officer in the segregation unit at Frankland.”
The judge said, in fact, the injured officer was one of four escorting Losh’s intended target to his cell.
She told Losh: “You have been in the prison establishment long enough to see how it works.
“You would have seen the number of staff around the prisoner they were escorting.
“Therefore, the risk of you touching any one of those four officers escorting the prisoner would have been obvious.
“I don’t have any evidence to say that’s an accepted version of events.
“But it seems that you are incapable of controlling your behaviour even in the prison’s highest-security unit.
“You are not deterred from committing acts of violence in prison.”
Judge Kidd added 22 months onto the end of Losh’s sentence.
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She said it would be for the prison authorities to determine exactly how long Losh must now serve.
He appeared for the hearing by video link from HMP Full Sutton, near York.
The earlier attack, in 2024, caused the victim six per cent burns requiring a week in hospital, with some scarring considered permanent.