Prison guards put gun crime prisoner in the same cell as his victim

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A “vulnerable” teenager was hospitalised after he was put in the same cell as a former friend who was in prison for trying to shoot him.

Lewis Clarke, 18, shot at the front window of William Cowley’s home in Formby, Merseyside after the 17-year-old, who has autism, accused him of stealing cigarettes in May 2015.

In response, Cowley took a knife out with him a week later and stabbed another boy, a friend of Clarke’s who cannot be named for legal reasons, in the side after getting into a “fistfight” in an alleyway.

The boy survived but was taken to hospital in a critical condition.

Following the two attacks, the boys were both taken to Werrington Prison in Stoke-on-Trent were prison guards put them in the same cell.

Clarke then stabbed Cowley in the kidney, the Liverpool Echo reported.

Speaking during Cowley’s sentencing in August, where he was jailed for five years with three years on licence, his defence lawyer Jeremy Rawson said: “Due to an administration error they were placed in the same cell.

“The defendant was hospitalised as a result of that. He has now recovered.

“No contact should have been allowed, unfortunately it was, and the defendant was injured as a result.”

The mistake could not be reported until Clarke was sentenced to seven and a half years in a Young Offenders Institution in a separate trial last week.

He had admitted the charges of possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, possessing a firearm and two counts of possessing bullets.

He and several other co-defendants were found guilty of handling the firearm which killed a Toxeth teenager, Kevin Wilson, in February 2015.

Liverpool Crown Court saw footage of Clarke and his friends snorting cocaine off a sawn-off shotgun and boasting of their involvement with deadly weapons.

They were not accused of Kevin’s murder.