A PRESTONPANS drug addict who turned to the sex industry to feed her habit has been jailed after she admitted spitting at a security officer within a cell complex at an Edinburgh police station.

Amy McMillan, of Constable Court, had been arrested and placed within a cell at St Leonard’s Police Station in Edinburgh on an unrelated matter when she began to act in an unruly manner on January 19 last year.

Edinburgh Sheriff Court was told that police custody and security officer worker Derek Trevis started his shift at 7am and his duties included welfare checks on those accused in custody.

Mr Trevis was called to McMillan’s cell when she pressed the buzzer system and had asked for an officer to attend to her request.

She told the officer that she had been “kept in the cell for too long” and began shouting and swearing at him.

McMillan then asked for toilet roll to be supplied before she said to the employee “ken what” and walked closer to the cell door hatch.

The court was told that 29-year-old McMillan then “spat directly through the open hatch” and the spit landed on Mr Trevor’s face.

He left the area and was attended to by an on-duty nurse, where he had his face washed thoroughly.

McMillan pleaded guilty to assaulting Mr Trevis when she appeared from custody at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Tuesday.

Lawyer Alistair Murphy, representing McMillan, told the court that his client had committed “a very unsavoury and nasty incident” and was currently serving a 22-month custodial sentence for a separate matter.

Mr Murphy said that McMillan had been suffering from “an out-of-control heroin addiction” at the time of the offence and had turned to shoplifting and the sex industry to help finance her drug habit.

The lawyer added that McMillan had been “scared straight” by being in prison and was now clean of the drug and was on a methadone prescription.

She was also studying within the prison setting and wanted to reconnect with her family, the court was told.

Sheriff Robert Fife sentenced McMillan to serve a custodial sentence of nine months which will run consecutively to her current prison term.