Prison officer brutally attacked by Plenty of Fish killer awarded £600,000
A prison officer who was ‘very nearly killed’ by murderer Carl Langdell during a vicious attack has been awarded a six figure compensation, eight years after the assault.
The 50-year-old officer, who has not been named, was attacked so badly he was unable to carry on with his job.
The injured guard said seeing Langdell get an ‘easy ride’ during his time behind bars had added ‘insult to injury’, he told The Mirror.
Langdell was jailed in 2016 for 26 years for killing teacher Katie Locke, 23.
The pair had met on dating site Plenty of Fish, and arranged to go to a hotel in Hertfordshire, where he carried out a ‘depraved’ sex attack.
Langdell admitted ‘violent fantasies’ at his sentencing hearing at St Albans Crown Court, and told NHS staff just months before the attack ‘I will kill someone’.
The murderer called himself a ‘psychopath’ and an independent review found ‘systemic missed opportunities’ to assess the risk that he posed.
Langdell was being held at a category B Bedford jail which he ‘basically had the run of the prison’ in 2016, said the officer.
The officer was attacked when he refused to unlock a cell so that Langdell could smoke in it.
The guard said: ‘He charged me. He smacked me in the face, smashing my eye socket, and threw me against a wall. He started strangling me and nearly broke my neck.’
The former prison officer, who now works as a postman, had to wait eight years after the attack for his £600,000 settlement.
‘One thing that really got my goat was that the day after I was attacked, two PE instructors carried a rowing machine across the prison… allowing him to continue his exercise routine.
‘It added insult to injury.
‘The reason I am talking about this is I became determined this sort of bad treatment should not happen to anyone else. I was treated very badly and the award I have been given reflects the psychological trauma I went through as well as the physical injuries.’
Langdell, 30, died in 2021 after taking his own life at maximum security Wakefield Prison.
The guard was awarded £601,000 at Luton County Court, which included £38,000 redundancy.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.