Personal injury news

Personal injury solicitors win Hannibal Lecter compensation case

Six prison officers have made a successful compensation claim and been awarded £1 million after witnessing a horrifying Hannibal Lecter-style murder in jail.

The six, who have remained anonymous, were left traumatised and in need of counselling after the April 2000 incident, and so instructed personal injury solicitors to sue the Home Office for damages. The trial took six years but a High Court judge has finally found in their favour.

The nightmare began when the six were working as wardens at Cardiff Prison, and were called to the cell of conman and burglar, Jason Ricketts. Ricketts had rung the panic alarm, and what the prison officers discovered when they reached his cell was to change their lives forever.

Lying on the floor in a pool of steaming blood was the body of his cellmate, 35-year-old Colin Bloomfield. The father-of-two had been throttled by Ricketts, who then sliced open his body with a razor blade.

The maniac then hacked out the corpse's spleen, chopped his liver in two and gouged out his eye in a method similar to that employed by legendary movie psychopath, Hannibal Lecter. The officers discovered the dead man's eyeball, along with some of his internal organs, stacked neatly in a locker.

29-year-old Ricketts, told the shocked wardens, "I was just about to eat his heart."

Ricketts is currently being held in a secure mental unit and, thanks to the efforts of their personal injury solicitors, the prison wardens are now able to get on with their lives as best they can.