Tearful teenage killers face life sentence
A child who laughed and joked with her friend as they posed for selfies while torturing a woman to death wept yesterday as she became one of the youngest girls convicted of murder in Britain.
The girls were 13 and 14 when they launched a brutal and sustained assault on Angela Wrightson, a 39-year-old alcoholic whose half-naked body was found with more than 100 wounds.
In an attack that lasted for several hours at the victim’s home in Hartlepool, the girls kicked, punched and stamped on the woman’s face as she pleaded for her life. They also hit her with improvised weapons including a vase, a kettle and a television.
At times they paused their beatings to take grinning selfies that were posted on social media. One showed Wrightson, then still alive, with bruising to her face.
The younger girl also chatted by phone to a friend who heard her shouting: ‘‘Go on, f***ing kill her.’’ Laughter was heard in the background.
Leeds crown court heard how Wrightson was known to buy alcohol and cigarettes for underage children. The two girls, who cannot be named for legal reasons, became frequent visitors to her home.
The youngest British girl known to have been convicted of murder is Sharon Carr, who was 12 when in 1992 she stabbed and mutilated a teenage hairdresser in Farnborough, Hampshire. Wrightson’s 13-year-old killer is the second-youngest girl to be found guilty of murder after a jury took less than four hours to return their verdicts.
The teenagers, who were in care and shared an intense relationship, broke down in tears. The girls covered their faces as they were led out of the dock.
They were warned by Mr Justice Globe that they faced life sentences. He said: ‘‘I am not going to proceed to sentence this afternoon, not least because I don’t think either of the girls are fit to deal with that exercise.’’ As the judge spoke, the younger girl’s mother fled the court in tears.
During their trial, each blamed the other for the killing. The younger girl said she played no part in the attack and did not encourage her friend. The older girl, who has a low IQ, admitted manslaughter owing to diminished responsibility. She accepted she hit Wrightson but claimed she did not intend to cause her serious harm.
It was suggested by a forensic psychiatrist in her defence that at the time of the attack in December 2014, the 14-year-old was suffering from ‘‘an abnormality of mental functioning’’ because of a condition described as ‘‘other mixed disorder of conduct or emotion’’. This was said to have been brought about in part by domestic violence she witnessed in her own upbringing. At the time of the attack she had taken painkillers given to her by her mother.
A prosecution psychiatric expert argued that the condition did not impair the girl’s ability to understand the nature of her conduct nor her capacity to exercise self-control.
The girls, now both 15, had let themselves into Wrightson’s unlocked house at 7.30pm and left at 11pm. They were captured on CCTV laughing before they returned from 2am to 4am ‘‘to see if she was dead’’. They will be sentenced tomorrow.