Shropshire prison attack trial: Footage of two prisoners forcing open barricaded cell door shown to jury
Footage of the moment two prisoners allegedly forced their way into a barricaded cell before attacking a fellow inmate at Shropshire's Stoke Heath Prison, has been played to a jury.
Steven Fletcher, 22, and Paul Woods, 28, are accused of causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Mitchell Downes – because they thought he wanted to be moved to a different wing at Stoke Heath Prison, near Market Drayton.
Activity on the the E wing corridor before, during and after the incident was shown to the court. But the alleged attack itself was not captured by the CCTV cameras.
The trial heard the pair “rained down” between 20 to 30 blows each on Mr Downes' head, face and body during the incident on April 4 last year, while accusing him of being a “snitch”.
The case so far:
Giving evidence under oath and from behind a screen, Mr Downes told the jury his memory of what happened was "blurry".
Under cross examination by barrister Trevor Meeghan, defending Paul Woods, Mr Downes denied that the reason that he could not remember all of what happened during the incident was because he had smoked the synthetic drug mamba before returning to his cell.
Mr Meeghan put to him that he had taken the drug inbetween seeing a prisoner officer and entering the cell and that he told a group of prisoners standing at his door what he was planning to do, including that he would take his own life.
Mr Downes replied: "No. I don't remember that. I don't remember telling them that I was going to barricade the door. I can't remember hearing what the prisoners were saying from inside the cell and I definitely didn't tell them that I was going to kill myself.
"As I said in my statement I barricaded myself in and the observation panel and began pacing the room. I didn't have any concept of the time."
The film footage showed Mr Downes arriving on the wing at about 3.14pm then a prison officer checking a neighbouring cell, unlocking but not checking inside Downes' cell, before moving away from the corridor.
When he disappears the defendants can be seen pushing open the door that Downes had barricaded using cabinets. By 3.35pm Woods had managed to force his way into the room. He is seen leaving two minutes later.
Woods, from Liverpool, and Fletcher, from Lancashire, both deny the allegations. The trial continues.
