POLICE used taser stun guns on a crazed prisoner holding a pair of scissors to the throat of a hostage during a dramatic showdown at a North-East hospital.
The drama began at midnight last night when a woman prisoner from Low Newton Prison somehow managed to grab a pair of scissors whilst awaiting treatment at the Durham University Hospital.
She held the scissors to the throat of a prison officer and threatened to ram them home unless doctors gave her drugs.
As the stand-off continued police arrived and managed to trick the prisoner by offering her a tub containing aspirin.
The moment she reached for the tablets PCs David Morgan and Claire Reed fired their taser stun guns - sending a combined shock of 100,000 volts into the prisoner.
Police said the 22-year-old prisoner had been taken to the hospitals accident and emergency ward with wounds that were thought to have been self inflicted.
After treatment she was returned to Low Newton. The prison officer was shaken but otherwise unharmed.
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