Indiana inmate gets 38 years for razor blade attack on guard

PERU, Ind. (AP) - An inmate at a northern Indiana prison convicted of slashing a correctional officer's face with a razor blade has received a 38-year sentence for the attack.

A Miami County judge sentenced Raul Sotelo on Wednesday in the July 2020 attack at the Miami Correctional Facility, the Kokomo Tribune reported.

Sotelo was already serving a life sentence in prison, with the possibility of parole, for his conviction in the September 1973 murder of a 12-year-old Lake County girl. Prosecutors said his sentence in the prison attack all but ensures he will spend the rest of his life in prison because it will run consecutively with his already established life sentence.

A jury convicted Sotelo last month of attempted murder, battery with bodily injury to a public safety officer and other charges in the attack on Officer Mackenzie Malott.

According to court records, Sotelo attacked Malott with a homemade weapon made from a razor blade wrapped with cardboard, leading him with a gash on the left side of his face that required eight stitches and left a deep, permanent 5-inch-long (12.7-centimeter-long) scar.