A murderer from Fife who has already spent more than 14 years in jail has had an extra eight months added for punching a prison guard in Stirling.
Nicole Earley, now 33, was only 16 when she who killed grandmother Ann Gray, 63, in her home in Crosshill, Fife, in November 2008, during a row over £5 and a packet of cigarettes.
She was one of Scotland’s youngest killers when jailed for life in 2010, with a minimum period of 14 years.
Stirling Sheriff Court heard the attack on the female prison officer happened on July 17 when Earley was being checked back into Stirling Prison after a hospital visit.
Prosecutor Lucy Clarke said: “She was argumentative, and aggressive towards staff members.”
She was placed on 15-minute observations under the Scottish Prison Service’s suicide prevention strategy and ordered to enter a safe cell.
Miss Clarke said: “She refused to enter the safer room and started to walk away towards a storage cupboard.”
The prison warder warned her not to enter the cupboard and Earley shouted “I’m not going into the f***ing cupboard” before turning round and swinging her arm with a closed fist towards Ms McGuigan’s face, connecting with her nose, then grabbing and pulling her by the hair.
She was restrained and moved to another area of the prison.
The court was not told of any injuries suffered by the 50-year-old warder.
Sentencing
Earley, 33, from Methil appeared by video link from Grampian Prison to plead guilty to a single charge of assault.
Representing herself, she was asked if there was anything she had to say about the circumstances and responded: “What’s done is done, it can’t be changed, okay.”
The court heard it was her third conviction for assault in custody.
Sheriff Hamilton jailed Earley for eight months, to be served consecutively to her existing sentence.
She smiled when the sentence was pronounced.
Ann Gray died as a result of a head injury after she was knocked to the ground and repeatedly stamped on.
The grandmother also suffered a fractured jaw and broken cheekbone, along with a fractured bone in her upper neck.
During a hearing into another of her assaults, in 2016, a court was told Earley was may have been suffering PTSD at the time of the murder.
On another occasion, she was convicted of sending letters from her cell covered in blood and swastikas, in which she threatened to kill and cannibalise a solicitor and send his face to a mask factory.
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