A CONVICTED robber hit a prison officer over the head with a table leg, pushed him through a doorway and escaped.
Connor Lee Davies, 21, was on the run for nearly two weeks before he handed himself in at Wrexham Police Station.
Mold Crown Court heard how Davies received a seven-year sentence for robbery at Mold Crown Court in 2010.
He was sent to Altcourse Prison in Liverpool and his family were able to visit.
But Stephen Edwards, defending, said for some reason he was then detained at various other prisons in different parts of the country, including Doncaster and Torquay.
He ended up at the Thorncross open youth custody centre near Warrington but when he heard bad news about his mother’s health he panicked because he had not seen his family for a long time.
Davies broke a table and used the leg to try and smash a window.
A prison officer opened the front door of the unit to investigate what was going on.
But as he did so Davies ran at him brandishing the table leg, which had screws sticking out.
He hit the officer, Colin Charles Munn, on the head and knocked him to the floor.
That was on January 19 and he was at large until February 2 when he surrendered himself to police.
Prosecutor Anna Pope played CCTV evidence of the incident to the court and said the officer had been unable to return to work nights.
Judge Peter Heywood gave him an eight-month sentence to be served consecutively to his current sentence.
He said that would extend his earliest release date by a few months.
The judge added it was said moving to different prisons had had an unsettling effect on Davies, of Queensway, Wrexham, and when he heard bad news about his mother’s health he was concerned because, having moved around, he had not seen his family for some time.
“You impulsively decided to try to escape,” the judge told him.
Fortunately the injuries were minor.
Davies admitted an escape charge last March but denied assaulting the officer.
A trial was due to be heard yesterday but he changed his plea to guilty after CCTV of the incident was produced by the prosecution.
The judge asked for a full explanation from the CPS why the CCTV had only been produced on the morning of the trial.
If it had been produced in March the matter would have been disposed of at that stage without “today’s fiasco”, he said.