Life for prisoner who murdered his cellmate
UNPROVOKED ATTACK WAS ‘SUSTAINED AND BRUTAL’
A PRISONER has been jailed for life for murdering killed his Nottingham Prison cellmate.
Ferencz-rudolf Pusok must serve a minimum term of 20 years before he can apply for parole after pleading guilty to the unprovoked strangling of Brett Lowe, 43, in what a judge called “a sustained and brutal attack”.
The city’s crown court heard Pusok strangled him using a ligature made from shoelaces.
He stabbed or cut Mr Lowe, of Stapleford, with a piece of plastic cutlery fashioned into a weapon, suffering cuts to his neck and to the fronts of his forearms as Mr Lowe tried to defend himself.
Pusok, 30, of no fixed address, delivered a number of heavy blows to Mr Lowe’s face, fracturing his jaw and knocking out teeth, fracturing his skull and causing bleeding over the brain. Mr Lowe also suffered a blow to the head.
Judge Gregory Dickinson QC, Recorder of Nottingham, said: “The pathologist could not say, nor can I, whether that was Mr Lowe’s head being struck against the floor or furniture by you or that one of the blows to the face was so powerful Mr Lowe collapsed hitting his head on the floor or furniture.
“That serious head injury would have rendered Mr Lowe defenceless, unconscious or incapacitated and no longer able to defend himself. You strangled him using both a ligature and your hands. That is manual strangulation. That is how you killed him.”
Mr Lowe’s hyoid bone – a bone in the neck – and voicebox were also fractured, and Pusok put a plastic bag over Mr Lowe’s head.
Pusok was given a ten-week jail sentence for offences including criminal damage and threatening behaviour just days before the attack on July 18, 2018.
That night he shared a cell with another inmate who was concerned about his “odd and menacing” behaviour, said the judge.
The following morning that prisoner had asked to be moved to another cell. Pusok had approached another inmate and “it was not clear to him what you wanted or were trying to say,” said the judge. “You seemed to be interested in his laces from his shoes.”
That inmate had called out to a prison officer “that you might be thinking of harming yourself”.
That same day Mr Lowe was remanded to the jail over allegations of burglary and robbery and went through the induction wing, where Pusok was housed. The two were put in a cell together.
During the night Mr Lowe rang the bell and told a prison officer Pusok had tried to strangle him.
“No action was taken,” said the judge.
“So far as I know nothing else significant happened during the night.”
The next morning father-of-three Mr Lowe repeated that Pusok had tried to strangle him during the night with a shoelace.
Through a Hungarian interpreter, the judge told Pusok: “Mr Lowe described you behaving in a bizarre manner. Mr Lowe repeated his concerns to the prison chaplain. The intention was to move Brett Lowe to another cell later in the day.”
Both men were locked back in the cell together at about 9.30am. Within a few minutes, Mr Lowe was dead.
“As to why this happened, like others in the case, I simply do not know,” said the judge. “It was unprovoked, it was without reason. You did say you wanted a single cell. For whatever reason, you decided to kill your cellmate.”
Mr Lowe’s family said in a statement: “Brett was a dad, a brother, an uncle, a nephew, cousin and a friend. Our father was denied the chance of meeting his first grandchild.
“He won’t be around to watch us grow or live his own life.
“Today’s sentencing has brought us all some closure and we can now finally move on with our lives.”