Lying fugitive Nicholas Rossi had his electric wheelchair confiscated in prison... for using it as a weapon. The American sex offender is in Edinburgh’s Saughton Prison awaiting extradition to the US over rape charges.
In his fake guise as an innocent Irishman called Arthur Knight, he used an electric wheelchair after claiming a Covid infection left him too unwell to walk. But the Sunday Mail reveal it was taken off him in prison last month when he began using it to ram other inmates.
Rossi’s need for the chair has been questioned – especially when a court heard he jumped out of a hospital bed at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital to chase two female medics. It comes after the Sunday Mail last week revealed how he'd conned senior members of Bob Dylan's team.
A prison source said: “Some of the prisoners have been calling him Nasty Nick, and he gets so frustrated he drives the wheelchair at them. Prison staff have seen it happen a few times and the thing was just taken off him outside his cell. Nobody thinks he needs it.
"The electric wheelchair has gone but has been replaced by a standard issue wheelchair. The sooner he is out of here the better. He’s become a joke figure, a real loner as well.”
Rossi, 35, will appear in court next month to face a further extradition hearing to return him to Utah where he is wanted over two allegations of rape and one of sexual assault. His flight from the FBI took him in 2017 from the US to the UK, where he met wife Miranda and just nine days after they married in Bristol, he faked his own death in his home state of Rhode Island. He was caught in Glasgow after being taken to the QEUH with Covid in 2021.
We can also reveal efforts are under way to transfer Rossi temporarily to a prison in England, where he is wanted for questioning over a rape in Essex in 2017. The Sunday Mail previously revealed how the allegation was made by Michelle Minnaar, 41, the first woman he met in the UK after arriving here in June 2017.
A source involved in the transfer said: “He needs to be in the English jurisdiction for police to question him... So they’re trying to find another high security prison.”
Essex Police have been in talks with Scotland’s Crown Office to try to make it happen. The Crown Office declined to comment. But a spokesman for Essex Police said: “We’re continuing to liase with the Scottish authorities regarding an allegation of rape in 2017 in Chelmsford.”
The Scottish Prison Service said they do not comment on individual prisoners.
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