A man recently jailed for his role in the shooting dead of 16-year-old Melanie McCarthy-McNamara has been left heavily scarred after boiling water was poured over him as he was preparing to sleep in his prison cell.

The attackers mixed sugar into the boiling water in an apparent bid to maximise the injury to their victim, 24-year-old Keith Hall.

However, contrary to media reports, the water was not poured down his throat.

“As it was poured over his back, face and chest, he got splashes into his mouth, but he wasn’t pinned down so the water could be poured down his throat,” said one source familiar with the incident.

The incident occurred after Hall, and the two prisoners who attacked him, had been housed in a special protection area of Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, because of fears for their safety in the main prison population.

“He had been in a cell with two other guys for around two weeks, they had all been put there to prevent them being attacked by prisoners in the main part of the jail, but then two of them turned on Hall and attacked him,” said one source.

The incident took place when the three prisoners were locked into their cell at around 11pm.

The two attackers boiled water and, unknown to Hall, mixed sugar into it.

They then surprised their victim, and pinned him down as the water was thrown over him.

Staff were alerted by Hall’s screams and he was treated at the scene before being brought to the Mater Hospital beside Mountjoy on the North Circular Road in Dublin’s north inner city.

Hall was transferred to St James Hospital the following morning. He spent one week in hospital and has just been returned to the jail.

The scalding attack was the second time in as many months he had been the victim of violence at the prison. Last month he was slashed with a knife in the face after he was set upon by a group of prisoners.

He sustained serious wounds and received more than 30 stitches.

Hall, of Kilmartin Drive, Tallaght, Dublin, in July pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the manslaughter of Ms McCarthy McNamara in Tallaght on February 8th, 2012.

Mr Justice Paul Carney handed down a 20-year jail-term. The court heard that father-of-one Hall was a heroin addict with 111 previous convictions dating back to when he was 14 years old, including theft, burglary, drugs and road traffic offences.

Hall told gardai Ms McCarthy McNamara’s boyfriend and another man were the intended victims of the attack in which she died.

A member of the Traveller community, she was fatally wounded in a drive-by shooting as she sat in a Nissan Primera with her boyfriend and his friend on Brookview Way at around 10.32pm on February 7th.

A black Santa Fe pulled up and a sawn-off shotgun was discharged into the rear passenger seat of the Primera.

Ms McCarthy was shot in the head and was driven in the car to Tallaght Hospital but she died of her injuries at 1.15am the next morning.

Hall said his role was to throw a rock at the window of a house, close to where the shooting happened, to lure the occupants out of it. He also helped dispose of the gun when the Santa Fe getaway vehicle ran out of petrol at City West.

Hall told gardai his motive was that he had been assaulted a week before the incident.