As a fresh-faced 18-year-old, Alexander Dighton won a Wales-wide competition in advanced mechanical engineering.
At the time, the robotics enthusiast had aspirations to join the RAF as an engineer.
Yet just a decade later he had been transformed into a self-confessed ‘enemy of the state’.
On January 31 this year – by now bearded and shaven-headed – the one-time star student single-handedly stormed a police station in one of the most peaceful parts of South Wales.
Armed with home-made weapons including a hatchet, he set a police van alight before hitting one officer and stabbing another, shouting: ‘I’m fed up, I’m done’.
