Cheyenne Nelson, 18, committed the crime while at the Wetherby Young Offenders Institute (Picture: Wikipedia)
A teenager who launched a vicious attack on prison guards couldn’t believe his ears when the judge spared him a further jail term.
Cheyenne Nelson was locked up in the Wetherby Young Offenders Institute when he sharpened a toilet brush and stabbed staff there on November 19 last year.
The now-18-year-old was handed a community order with a curfew instead of jail time.
When he heard Judge Mushtaq Khokhar’s decision, he said: ‘I do not understand why you haven’t sent me to prison. If I was in your shoes I would have sent me.’
Mr Khokhar said he had been convinced by Nelson’s lawyer who said the teenager was ‘a changed young man who had made remarkable progress’.
Leeds Crown Court heard how he has attended mosque since converting to Islam in custody, where he also enrolled in several classes.
It’s a far cry from his bahaviour at the time of the crime, when he had already been isolated from other prisoners.
Leeds Crown Court handed Nelson a year-long community order with a curfew (Picture: BPM Media)
Guards were trying to escort him from the exercise yard to his cell but he refused to go.
It was at this point that Nelson pulled out his makeshift shank and stabbed one of the guards at the top of his head.
Even after he dropped the weapon, he continued fighting those trying to subdue him.
He kicked another officer in the groin several times before kicking a third in the knee – causing it to bend back into an unnatural position.
He admitted three counts of causing actual bodily harm, assaulting an emergency worker and possession of an offensive weapon.
Nelson, from Swansea, has 13 previous convictions for 24 offences, including robbery, affray, dwelling burglaries and drug dealing.
Judge Khokhar told him: ‘You are already building up a criminal record for serious offending. You have been involved in a lot of criminality.
‘You kicked off. I saw the incident on the CCTV and it was frightening. The number of officers who had to be summoned it under control – you were trying to hurt them.
‘Only you know the reason and you had adapted the toilet brush. But there had been a remarkable change in you since then.’
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The judge said he had seen a ‘remarkable change’ since the crime.
