A WOMAN has appeared in court charged with launching a razor attack on a woman who was jailed for killing her three children at Scotland's only all-female jail.
Angela Hamilton, 39, appeared on petition at Stirling Sheriff Court accused of assaulting California-born Theresa Riggi to her severe injury and permanent disfigurement.
The single charge alleges that Hamilton grabbed Riggi, 47, by the hair and repeatedly slashed her face and head with a razor blade or similar implement in Ross House, the psychiatric wing of Cornton Vale, near Stirling, on November 19, 2011.
Riggi – who was serving 16 years for the culpable homicide of her children – is said to have been permanently scarred as a result of the assault.
Hamilton, of Cambuslang, South Lanarkshire, made neither plea nor declaration at the brief, private hearing before Sheriff Wyllie Robertson and the case was continued for further examination.
Defence agent Matthew Berlow's application for bail was granted, and Hamilton was released to Leverndale Hospital in Glasgow.
Riggi stabbed her twin sons Austin and Luke, eight, and daughter Cecilia, five, to death in their flat in Edinburgh in August 2010 in a crime that shocked Scotland. She was found badly injured after falling from a second-floor balcony in an apparent suicide attempt after a gas explosion.
She had moved to the capital with her children from Skene in Aberdeenshire after the break-up of her marriage to the children's father, Pasquale Riggi.
The High Court in Edinburgh heard that Riggi had been a protective mother who was involved in a custody battle with her estranged husband over access to the children. Riggi was initially charged with murder but later admitted culpable homicide on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
Lord Bracadale described the killings as "truly disturbing" and "grotesque".
Another inmate in Cornton Vale, a 22-year-old woman, was charged with assaulting Riggi last October by allegedly throwing her down a flight of stairs, but the case was dropped in June when the Crown Office said there was insufficient evidence.
Riggi was moved out of Cornton Vale in December 2011.
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