A gangster who repeatedly slashed a prisoner’s neck in a frenzied jail attack was the mastermind behind a firebomb murder plot that saw a thug burn to death on a driveway.
Robert Warnock, 30, was already serving decades behind bars for organising a campaign of revenge firebombings that turned Greenock into a warzone in 2020.
He was back in court on Friday admitting to slashing a fellow inmate so savagely inside HMP Shotts that the victim was left fighting for his life.
Warnock chased Jason Arthur through the Allanton Hall wing of the prison before striking him three times on the neck with a “razor blade” style weapon on November 29, 2021.
View 7 ImagesHMP Shotts in Shotts, Lanarkshire.(Image: PA)
Judges watched harrowing CCTV footage showing prison officers struggling to restrain Warnock after the assault while Arthur desperately tried to fend him off with nothing more than a dinner tray. The victim later had to be rushed to hospital in Wishaw where medics discovered one of the wounds had come perilously close to his carotid artery.
He required two units of blood after the attack.
Warnock admitted assaulting Arthur to his severe injury, permanent disfigurement and to the danger of his life after prosecutors accepted a plea to the reduced charge. No motive for the savage prison attack was revealed.
The bloody jail attack is the latest in Warnock’s murky and violent criminal past. He was first jailed for 11 years after carrying out what a judge branded a “brutal and cowardly attack” on Lynsey O’Neill and her partner Scott Mitchell in Greenock.
Armed with a meat cleaver, Warnock attacked Ms O’Neill as she waited for a taxi on Belville Street on June 28, 2019. When Mr Mitchell rushed to help her, he too was hacked with the weapon.
Ms O’Neill suffered a horrific wound stretching from one ear to the centre of her neck and had to be placed into an induced coma while doctors fought to save her.
The court heard Warnock had already built up a terrifying history of serious assaults involving knives and even a baseball bat.
Sentencing him at the time, Judge Gordon Liddle said: “You are a particularly dangerous man.”
But the violence did not stop behind bars. While serving that sentence, Warnock orchestrated a chilling campaign of revenge attacks from his prison cell after his younger brother Reece was stabbed.
View 7 ImagesForensic officers at the scene on Union Street
Using illicit mobile phone contact during the Covid pandemic, Warnock directed associates on the outside to target homes linked to Andrew Sutherland and Leonard Cole Jnr, who were blamed for the attack on his brother.
The campaign of terror saw families forced to flee for their lives as petrol bombs rained down on homes across Greenock. Lord Mulholland later told Warnock he had behaved “like a gangster” while trying to turn the streets into a “warzone”.
One of the most horrifying episodes unfolded on September 14, 2020.
A drug user called George Miller, 46, had been recruited by the gang to carry out a revenge petrol bombing at the Union Street home of Leonard Cole Jnr’s parents, Rosaleen Sutherland and Leonard snr.
View 7 ImagesGeorge Miller burned to death in the garden of a property in the town
Warnock had paid Miller cash and crack cocaine before the attack. However, after pouring petrol through the letterbox of the property, Miller accidentally set himself alight in a massive fireball.
Shocking CCTV showed Miller moving around the garden of the property. He appeared to be carrying a petrol cannister.
The clip, which was never published by the Daily Record, captured a horrific fireball explosion which left Miller engulfed in flames. He then collapsed on the driveway, where he died.
View 7 ImagesFootage capturing the moment Miller died emerged online
The Union Street attack formed part of a sustained wave of firebombings. Just two days after Miller’s death, another firebomb attack left a 40-year-old woman seriously injured while a nine-year-old girl narrowly escaped without injury.
View 7 ImagesThe scene of the blaze on Wellington Street
A white Suzuki Splash car had been seen in the area at the time of the blaze and drove off after the incident. Around 10 minutes later, on nearby Skye Street, three men got out of the vehicle and ran off on foot.
Just over three hours after the flat blaze, police were called after reports that the same white car was on fire in Skye Street – and had been reported stolen from a property in the west end of the town.
Days later, another petrol bomb targeted a Cumberland Road property where a 45-year-old woman, a six-year-old child and two other people were inside.
Warnock eventually admitted conspiracy to murder over the revenge plot and was handed another 15 years and three months in prison, to run consecutively to his attempted murder sentence. His earliest release date is now October 2046.
He was one of six men involved in the plot, who were jailed for a total of 64 years.
View 7 ImagesThe High Court in Edinburgh(Image: Daily Record)
Sentencing him, the judge said: “You engaged in a campaign of terror planned and executed over a period of months. You sought to turn Greenock into a warzone for your feud.
“You were the instigator. You were prepared to go to any lengths to exact revenge. This you did from a prison cell while serving a sentence of 11 years for attempted murder. You behaved like a gangster to terrorise people in their homes.”
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