{"id":476215,"date":"2026-03-15T02:26:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T02:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/476215\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T02:26:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T02:26:07","slug":"londons-burning-actor-john-alford-54-dies-in-prison-prisons-and-probation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/476215\/","title":{"rendered":"London\u2019s Burning actor John Alford, 54, dies in prison | Prisons and probation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The actor John Alford has died in prison two months after being jailed for sexually assaulting two teenage girls.<\/p>\n<p>Alford, 54, was jailed for eight-and-a-half years in January after he was found guilty of the assaults which occurred during a party at a friend\u2019s home.<\/p>\n<p>The actor, who appeared in the drama London\u2019s Burning and BBC show Grange Hill, died at HMP Bure, Norfolk, on Friday, the Prison Service said.<\/p>\n<p>Alford, who was tried under his real name, John Shannon, was convicted of four counts of sexual activity with a 14-year-old girl and charges of sexual assault and assault by penetration relating to a 15-year-old girl at a property in Hertfordshire in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Jurors heard during the trial that he had sexually assaulted the girls while they were drunk after a night out at the pub.<\/p>\n<p>A Prison Service spokesperson said: \u201cJohn Shannon died in prison on March 13 2026.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs with all deaths in custody, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will investigate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The actor John Alford has died in prison two months after being jailed for sexually assaulting two teenage&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-476215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}