Youth throttled inmate with lace

Dumfries Young Offenders Institution, where the murder occurred

A teenager strangled a fellow prisoner with a shoelace as he slept in their shared dormitory inside a youth jail in Dumfries, a court has heard.

Daniel Eastwood, 19, throttled Paul Algie, 22, after hitting him with a cupboard door in Dumfries Young Offenders' Institution in February.

At the High Court in Glasgow, Essex-born Eastwood admitted murdering Algie, from Dunfermline.

Sentence was deferred until October for a psychiatric report to be prepared.

The court heard that the dormitory where the killing occurred was used as a halfway house for vulnerable youngsters before they were returned to mainstream prison.

'I held it tight'

The room was shared by the victim, his killer and a third young man, Stephen Pool, who slept through the entire incident despite being just feet away from where it happened.

At 0555 GMT on 26 February the cell buzzer went off and officers found Mr Algie dead. Eastwood holding the shoelace he had used to strangle him.

In his confession, he said: "I held it very tight, and every time he moved I just made it tighter, tighter, tighter and tighter, until he was dead."

A post-mortem examination revealed the blow to Mr Algie's head had probably stunned him and the force used to strangle him had been "considerable and prolonged."

'Disturbed young man'

The court also heard that Eastwood had told other prisoners he was going to kill Mr Algie but they never formally reported it because they did not think he was serious.

Psychiatrists who interviewed Eastwood later concluded that while he was sane and fit to plead, he was suffering from psychological problems and was a "disturbed young man".

Donald Findlay QC, defending, asked for sentence to be adjourned so he could obtain an up-to-date psychiatric report on Eastwood.

He added: "One of the things he is most anxious about is to find out why he killed Algie because he doesn't know."