What happened
On 22 July 2025 Ryan Gee, 35, of no fixed address, arrived at Preston Probation Office in Ashton-on-Ribble for a scheduled meeting with the officer who supervised him. He had come armed with two knives and an imitation firearm later identified as a BB gun.
The Crown Prosecution Service called it a premeditated attack. Gee pulled the knife and the imitation firearm from his backpack and lunged at the officer, stabbing her in the chest. He chased her into reception and stabbed her again, and colleagues got her to another part of the building. He then threatened a second member of staff, trapping her while he placed a letter addressed to a different probation officer in a tray.
She was taken to Royal Preston Hospital with four stab wounds, needed extensive surgery and was discharged six weeks later, on 2 September.
The outcome
On 21 August 2025 Gee pleaded guilty at Liverpool Crown Court to attempted murder, false imprisonment, possession of an imitation firearm and two counts of possession of a bladed article. On 12 January 2026 he was jailed for life. The BBC reports a minimum term of 15 years and six months; the CPS announces 16 years.
In her victim statement she said: “I find myself catastrophising every situation, constantly scanning rooms for exits in case I need to escape.”
In December 2025 the Guardian reported that ministers had approved probation-wide pilots of self-defence training, body-worn cameras and knife arches, after this attack and a second stabbing at Oxford.
What went wrong
The weapon arrived through the front of a public building into a room set up for a conversation. Nothing in the sources says the bag was searched, that anyone watched his hands, or that the meeting was planned with a route out.
Napo reported basic physical-security failures across the probation estate, “including at least one office where the front entrance does not lock”. The Guardian puts the scale behind it: 6,000 probation officers supervising more than 240,000 people, after the SDS40 early release scheme.
She was not alone in the building. She was alone in the room, which is the configuration the job is built around: one officer, one client, a closed door, and colleagues who can help only once something has gone wrong.
What it teaches
A one-to-one appointment is a lone working setting, whatever the building is called. Its risk assessment covers the room, the seating, the route out, and the bag she cannot see inside.
Premeditation changes the control that matters. Where a client arrives determined to attack, the question is not how the officer talks him down but what stops the weapon reaching the room: bag searches, a lock on the front door, a second member of staff within earshot, an alarm not reached across a desk.
Our lone working training covers room planning and alarm arrangements for one-to-one meetings.
Questions for the room
- What does your policy say about searching clients or screening for weapons, and who enforces it?
- When a client walks in with a backpack, who watches his hands, and who watches the door?
- Which rooms in your building have more than one way out, and which rely on a single corridor?
- The officer now scans rooms for exits. What would make that unnecessary for the next one?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. The BBC, the CPS, the Guardian and Stand2 were read. They agree on attack, plea and sentence. The BBC gives a minimum term of 15 years and six months, the CPS 16 years; both are printed rather than reconciled. The officer is not named in any source and is not named here. No source describes the office layout or the employer’s risk assessment for the meeting.
Sources
- BBC, 2026 · https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8jzjep835o
- CPS North West, 2026 · https://www.cps.gov.uk/north-west/news/jailed-life-man-who-attempted-murder-probation-officer-preston
- The Guardian, 2025 · https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/dec/04/probation-officers-in-england-and-wales-to-be-given-self-defence-training-after-stabbings
- Stand2, 2026 · https://stand2.com/probation-officer-stabbed
Reviewed 20 October 2026.