The NSW government has admitted it failed to provide a safe workplace after two officers were stabbed with shivs and one suffered chemical burns during a prison ambush.
Officers Nathan Fuller and Matthew Lansdowne expected a normal day at work at the Mid North Coast Correctional Centre near Kempsey when they were attacked on December 19, 2020.
Failures in workplace health and safety policies leading to the violent incident were later admitted by the NSW Department of Communities and Justice, which oversees Corrective Services NSW.
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The ambush was headed by an inmate, who cannot be named for legal reasons, serving a prison sentence of 27 years for the brutal stabbing murder of Queanbeyan service station attendant Zeeshan Akbar in 2017.
Incarcerated at the Kempsey jail, the now-24-year-old teamed up with fellow inmate Noel Barrett, 27, to ambush Fuller and Lansdowne.
Barrett had been jailed in September 2020 for up to three-and-a-half years for kidnapping.
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Luring the prison guards out of the officers’ station by asking that they open a storeroom, the two inmates attacked them with prison-made weapons.
Lansdowne suffered two stab wounds to his neck, and contusions and lacerations to his body.
He managed to get Barrett out of the officers’ station, confiscating his shiv and leaving the other inmate inside with Fuller.
Barrett was let back in after his fellow inmate threatened violence.
With the two inmates inside the officers’ station, they tied up Fuller with a skipping rope before beating, kicking him and stabbing him with a shiv.
They found a second shiv inside the room as well as undiluted Fincol, a hospital-grade disinfectant they poured over Fuller, causing chemical burns to various parts of his body.
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He sustained a stab wound to the upper chest, 40 superficial stab wounds to his back and blunt-force injuries to his head.
“These injuries to his face caused swelling, resulting in eye damage and blurred vision,” according to court documents.
The 24-year-old inmate also smashed a loose fluorescent light bulb over the prison officer’s head.
“(He) threatened to kill (Mr) Fuller on a number of occasions and also to set fire to him after spraying the contents of a can of fly spray around his back and neck,” the documents said.
The hostage situation ended after six hours when negotiations resulted in the release of Fuller in exchange for the two inmates being considered for the buprenorphine injection program.
Buprenorphine is a prescription opioid that can be administered to help those with substance abuse issues.
In April 2023, the two inmates were sentenced to further time in prison over the attack.
SafeWork NSW prosecuted the department, which pleaded guilty to one charge of breaching its duty to provide a safe workplace.
Breaches of duty included guards not being required to enter and exit the officers’ station through an air lock, which would isolate them from inmates, and a failure to ensure chemicals like Fincol were securely stored.
While these deficiencies were rectified after the incident, Corrective Services still had no policies requiring loose items to be tied down or for risk assessments to be transferred along with inmates when they moved jails.
A sentence hearing will be held at Downing Centre District Court on November 20.
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