Thirteen-year-old who killed stranger tried bribing Leeds prison officer after boiling-water attack

Jayden O’Brien was jailed in 2021 for being part of a gang who killed a man in a church yard in Lancashire to steal his Rolex watch.

He was given six years’ jail, but handed a 27-month extension last year for violence at Young Offender Institute (YOI) Wetherby.

Now 18, he was returned to Leeds Crown Court this week where he admitted further incidents at the north Leeds prison.

O’Brien pleaded guilty to two counts of ABH, assault on a prison officer, perverting the course of justice, Section 18 GBH with intent and two counts of possessing offensive weapons.

He was handed another four years’ jail this week, with the judge telling him that he “sees violence as normal”.

Due to his volatile nature, O’Brien was held in the Napier unit of the YOI where the most violent and vulnerable offenders are taken, prosecutor Joseph Bell told the court.

On the afternoon of March 28 last year, officers were collecting metal food trays from cells when they arrived at O’Brien’s. After he failed to respond, they opened the cell door only to have boiling water thrown in their faces, causing burn injuries.

One of those officers was passed a note from O’Brien three months later, telling him he would pay him £2,000 if he dropped the charge, asking for his bank details so the money could be deposited by a friend. This note was passed to the police.

On July 10, O’Brien was due to be let out for exercise but refused to take off his shoes when the metal detector kept sounding. He threw punches at one officer, before headbutting him, and told him he knew where he lived and that he would “see him soon”.

Finally, on September 14 last year, he spotted a group of youths being escorted across a yard, smashed a window and charged at the group, stabbing one three inches below his neck with a makeshift weapon - a sharpened piece of plastic. He also had a shard of glass that he picked up from the broken window.

O’Brien has seven previous convictions for 14 offences. He was just 13 when he helped kill 34-year-old Steven McMyler in a churchyard in Wigan in 2020.

He was found guilty of manslaughter and conspiracy to rob the following year. He was one of five jailed for the horrific death caught on CCTV. They did not know the father-of-two but targeted him due to his £11,000 Rolex watch.

Last year he was given his new 27-month sentence for stabbing an officer with a homemade knife and threw a kettle of boiling water over three other officers in separate incidents at YOI Wetherby.

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Mitigating for his latest offences, Safter Salam said that O’Brien was still only 17 at the time of the attacks.

He said he had been “institutionalised” having spent the last four years locked up, and from “trauma” caused by lengthy periods isolated in the segregation unit, often for his own safety due to threats from others.

He said he was repeatedly exposed to violence at home as a child and on the streets, even coming to the attention of youth services at the age of 10.

He said that O’Brien has “deeply ingrained defensive mechanisms”. But Mr Salam added: “He does remain capable of change.”

The judge, Recorder Anthony Dunne told him: “It seems your behaviour is, in many ways, a survival mechanism.

“The tragedy is, by resorting to that behaviour, you bind yourself even more in those circumstances you find yourself in.”

He said that O’Brien had “little concern” for consequences which “leads him to see violence as normal”.

He said the four-year sentence will run consecutively to his existing sentences.