Warder recounts screams from Theresa Riggi cell

Riggi was in prison after stabbing her three children to death. Picture: PA

Prison officer Calum Graham said he saw Angela Hamilton, who occupied the cell next door, leaving Riggi’s room, shortly after the screaming started.

Mr Graham, 37, was giving evidence on the first day of the trial of Hamilton, 40, who is accused of grabbing Riggi by the hair in her cell at Cornton Vale Prison, near Stirling, and repeatedly striking her face and head with a razor blade or similar, leading her seriously injured and scarred.

Hamilton, of Glasgow, denies the offence, which is said to have happened on November 19, 2011, at the prison, Scotland’s only all-female jail.

Mr Graham told jurors at Stirling Sheriff Court that he was on breakfast duty that morning and had seen Riggi pass him to collect her food.

He said she seemed “fine”, did not appear to be injured and her returned alone to her cell in unit seven of the prison. Shortly afterwards he heard screaming.

He said: “There was an incident. I heard screaming coming from unit seven.

“I didn’t know who it was at the time.

“I moved towards the room it was coming from. Miss Hamilton was coming out of the room at that time.”

He said Hamilton then went into her own cell, which was next door to Riggi’s, without speaking to him.

Mr Graham said he looked into Riggi’s cell as he passed by on the way to lock Hamilton up.

He said: “Theresa was kneeling on the floor and there was blood underneath her nose.

“She was still screaming. No-one else was there.”

He added: “I shut Angela’s door and locked it. I knew that she was involved in an incident.”

The prison officer said he then helped lock the rest of the prisoners in their cells which was standard procedure before standing guard outside Riggi’s cell.

He told the court that another prison officer was in the cell and Riggi was sitting on a chair with blood coming from her nose, still “crying and upset”.

He said the other officer had contacted a nurse and the prison manager.

The jury was also shown CCTV footage of a corridor of cells in the unit that morning, including Riggi and Hamilton’s.

Describing the footage, Mr Graham said Hamilton, dressed in a green t-shirt and blue jeans, could be seen getting halfway down the corridor and then turning back.

He said: “She is returning and going into her own cell and then going out of her own cell into Theresa Riggi’s cell.

“She comes out and myself and Officer McCabe are heading to Theresa Riggi’s cell.

“We were coming up the corridor because we heard screaming.”

Depute fiscal Claire Bremner, prosecuting, asked him: “Apart from staff we can see no-one else going into Theresa Riggi’s cell apart from Angela Hamilton, is that correct?”

“Yes,” he replied.

Mr Graham told Hamilton’s defence lawyer Murray Aitken that he knew who Riggi was, and had been given information about her crime and sentence.

Riggi was serving a sentence for culpable homicide after stabbing her three children to death in Edinburgh in 2010. She died from bronchial pneumonia earlier this year.

The trial of Angela Hamilton, before Sheriff William Gilchrist and jury, continues.