EXCLUSIVE | 

Thug jailed for biting taxi driver’s ear off charged with assaulting prison officers

The 41-year-old is already well-known to the criminal justice system

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A notorious thug is to be charged with attacking two prison officers last Christmas.

Jonathan Turley, who was jailed last year for the latest in a long line of violent attacks, is alleged to have assaulted the officers during separate incidents at Magilligan Prison on Christmas Day and Boxing Day last year.

Turley, who is also charged with damaging a cell at the County Derry prison, is due in court later this month in relation to the alleged attacks.

The 41-year-old is already well-known to the criminal justice system.

Turley was sentenced to five years in prison last year for an attack during which he bit off part of a taxi driver’s ear.

He had been extradited back to Northern Ireland from Thailand to face charges over the 2014 attack.

A court was told the driver had picked Turley up in Belfast.

However, the cabbie, who suspected the man he had just picked up was not the person who had made the booking, asked Turley the name the taxi had been ordered under.

Not happy with his response, the driver then asked Turley to get out of the vehicle.

The thug replied “how about I throw you out of the car” and punched the driver several times, before leaning forward and biting part of his right ear off.

The injured driver had to undergo specialised plastic surgery but a partial DNA hit later led detectives to Turley, who is originally from north Belfast.

His conviction last year was the latest in Turley’s extensive criminal record.

In 2008, he was jailed for ten years for stabbing a man five times.

A court was told Turley was at a party when he became angry after his victim mistook his scarf for a towel and mopped his head with it.

Turley was enraged at this and a fight broke out.

A court heard how Turley then attacked his victim with a kitchen knife, stabbing him five times in the upper body.

He was released from prison in March 2014 but rearrested later that year following a high-speed chase and charged with kidnapping and beating his partner.

In May 2015, Turley was granted compassionate bail for eight hours to visit someone in hospital.

Police, who had described Turley as a “danger to the public”, were opposed to his bail application.

However, a communication breakdown meant no officer was in court to oppose the bail application.

Police concerns about Turley were proven to be right when he failed to return to prison.

After sometime on the run, he settled in Cork where he started a new life with a woman who did not know about his violent past.

In 2016, he was arrested by gardai in Cork on domestic abuse charges against that woman, and a computer check confirmed he was wanted in Northern Ireland.

He was extradited across the border and jailed for 22 months in May 2017 for the attack on his former partner in Belfast.

After being released from prison once again, Turley moved to Thailand but the PSNI later issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with the 2014 attack on the taxi driver.

He was arrested in Bangkok in July 2019 at the behest of the British Embassey.

Reports from Thailand at the time said local police had described Turley was a “tricky character” to arrest.

It was claimed he had changed his address in Bangkok and northern Thailand several times to stay ahead of the police.

They eventually nabbed him after learning that he had an interest in Muay Thai kickboxing.

Thai police were then able to track Turley to a house in Bangkok where he had been living there with his Thai girlfriend.