Robert Warnock, a gangster already serving decades for orchestrating a campaign of revenge firebombings that turned Greenock into a warzone, admitted in court to a savage prison attack. On November 29, 2021, he chased fellow inmate Jason Arthur through HMP Shotts before slashing his neck three times with a razor-blade style weapon. The victim was left fighting for his life, with one wound coming perilously close to his carotid artery. He required two units of blood after the attack.
Prison Attack Details
Judges watched harrowing CCTV footage showing prison officers struggling to restrain Warnock after the assault while Arthur desperately tried to fend him off with a dinner tray. Warnock admitted assaulting Arthur to his severe injury, permanent disfigurement, and to the danger of his life after prosecutors accepted a plea to the reduced charge. No motive for the attack was revealed.
Previous Violent History
Warnock was first jailed for 11 years for a brutal meat cleaver attack on Lynsey O'Neill and her partner Scott Mitchell in Greenock on June 28, 2019. Ms O'Neill suffered a horrific wound from ear to neck and was placed in an induced coma. Sentencing him, Judge Gordon Liddle said: 'You are a particularly dangerous man.'
While serving that sentence, Warnock orchestrated a chilling campaign of revenge attacks from his prison cell after his younger brother Reece was stabbed. Using illicit mobile phone contact during the Covid pandemic, he directed associates to target homes linked to Andrew Sutherland and Leonard Cole Jnr. The campaign saw families forced to flee as petrol bombs rained down on homes across Greenock.
Firebomb Murder Plot
One horrifying episode unfolded on September 14, 2020. Drug user George Miller, 46, recruited by the gang to carry out a revenge petrol bombing at the Union Street home of Leonard Cole Jnr's parents, accidentally set himself alight. Shocking CCTV showed Miller engulfed in flames after pouring petrol through the letterbox; he collapsed on the driveway and died. Warnock had paid Miller cash and crack cocaine for the attack.
Just two days after Miller's death, another firebomb attack left a 40-year-old woman seriously injured while a nine-year-old girl narrowly escaped. Days later, another petrol bomb targeted a Cumberland Road property where a 45-year-old woman, a six-year-old child, and two others were inside.
Sentencing and Impact
Warnock admitted conspiracy to murder over the revenge plot and was handed another 15 years and three months in prison, to run consecutively to his attempted murder sentence. His earliest release date is now October 2046. He was one of six men jailed for a total of 64 years. Sentencing him, the judge said: 'You engaged in a campaign of terror planned and executed over a period of months. You sought to turn Greenock into a warzone for your feud. You were the instigator. You were prepared to go to any lengths to exact revenge. You behaved like a gangster to terrorise people in their homes.'
