Notorious Hull criminal savagely attacked in prison
INMATE GIVEN LIFE SENTENCE AFTER SLASHING PRISONER WITH A ‘SHANK’
NOTORIOUS Hull criminal Aiden Semper – currently serving a ten-year jail sentence for a horrific Christmas Eve attack – was savagely assaulted in prison by a fellow inmate, leaving him with scars to his face.
Semper was wounded by knifewielding Stuart Pitman inside the Lowdham Grange jail in Nottinghamshire. Pitman, 35, punched Semper in the head before slashing him in the face, Nottingham Crown Court heard.
Now, Pitman has been handed a life sentence for the attack, which he carried out using a “shank”, thought to have been forged from plastic and a razor blade. Semper suffered a number of slash wounds to his face and rated the pain as “eight out of ten”.
A trial heard how the attack happened inside the prison on May 31, 2021, as Semper was sitting on a pool table. Pitman left his cell and hit Semper “with significant force”.
Pitman then sat astride his victim, pulled the “shank” from his waistband and attacked Semper’s face with it.
In a victim impact statement, Semper said: “Even two-and-a-half years later I still have problems with eating and I feel very insecure when I have my hair cut because of the scars.”
Semper was jailed in 2019 for barging his way into a couple’s home and cutting a man’s face with a carving knife. During a terrifying struggle, he tried to push the knife into the chest of the victim, who was known to him.
Eventually, Semper allowed himself to be disarmed, apologised, and “burst into tears”. The victim later said the unprovoked attack “made me fear for my life in my own home”, Hull Crown Court heard.
Semper was convicted by a jury of aggravated burglary and jailed for 10 years. Following the guilty verdict, he leapt out of the dock and managed to escape from the court. He ran past the Guildhall and almost climbed a fence, before he was stopped by a security guard.
His very public life of crime began aged just 16, when he was named and shamed by police for terrorising neighbourhoods across the city.
Pitman, now of HMP Woodhill, near Milton Keynes, was found guilty of a section 18 offence of causing grievous bodily harm with intent. At the time of the attack, he was serving a ten-year term for a similar offence of GBH with intent, and he had an extensive list of previous offences, mainly committed in Bedfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
Lucky Thandi, mitigating, said Pitman suffered physical abuse “at the hands of those people who were supposed to be protecting him”, as he grew up in care from the age of seven. She said: “He learned to problem solve with his fists and he has a real sense of paranoia not knowing who to trust. It is not possible to say exactly what the weapon was.”
Sentencing Pitman for the attack on Semper, Judge Nirmal Shant KC said: “It is only that you were pulled off him by prison officers that caused this incident to end.
“When he was on the ground you produced the weapon and struck him repeatedly with it. That shows it is a case where there was significant planning and premeditation and you have a significant (criminal) record for serious violence.”
He said the life sentence would include “a minimum” of five years and three months in jail before Pitman would be eligible to apply for parole.