A jury convicted two teenagers of the fatal stabbing of a transgender girl, Brianna Ghey, who was murdered in northwest England earlier this year.
The 16-year-old victim was found to have been stabbed with a hunting knife 28 times in her head, neck, chest, and back in broad daylight. It came after she was lured to a park in Warrington on Feb. 11.
Brianna Ghey Murder Suspects Convicted
The two teens were identified as girl X and boy Y and are now 16 years of age but were 15 years old at the time of the crime. They have both denied killing Ghey but blamed each other for the fatal stabbing of the transgender girl. Officials do not currently know if one or both of the suspects wielded the knife used in the murder.
The jury handling the case consisted of seven men and five women and they convicted the two suspects following a four-week trial at Manchester Crown Court. As per the Associated Press, the jurors deliberated for just four hours and 40 minutes before handing out their verdict.
In a statement, Justice Amanda Yip told the jurors that they would most likely have not expected sitting on a case as emotionally difficult as Ghey's murder. The trial heard that the young defendants were intelligent and had a fascination with violence, torture, and serial killers.
The two allegedly planned the attack for several weeks, detailed in a handwritten plan and phone messages that detectives found on their mobile devices. The two also discussed killing other people, which prompted police early in the investigation to rule out transphobia as a motivation behind the fatal stabbing of the transgender girl.
Law enforcement personnel also believe that Ghey was killed because she was vulnerable and accessible, with her death not a hate crime but done for "enjoyment" and a "thirst for killing." The senior investigating officer from Cheshire Police, Nigel Parr said that the killing was a senseless murder that was committed by two teenagers who had an obsession with murder.
Fatal Stabbing of Transgender Girl
Yip told the two teenagers that she would "have to impose a life sentence" but would first need to consider the minimum time they would be required to serve before being considered for release, according to the New York Times.
Prosecutors said that the planning, the violence, and the age of the killers in the Ghey murder case is "beyond belief." They also described the "deadly influence" of the two suspects upon one another.
The victim's mother, Esther Ghey said after the trial that she was glad that the two teens would have to spend many years in prison. She said that the suspects did not even display an ounce of remorse for what they did to her daughter.
Justice Yip also said that she would be sentencing the two teenagers next month and would later decide on whether or not to life reporting restrictions so that the killer's identities could be revealed to the public,
When the verdict was read out, the two defendants did not react but their mothers wept inside the court. The victim's mother later urged "empathy and compassion" for the killers' parents, saying that they, too, have lost a child and must live the rest of their lives knowing about what their child has done, said The Guardian.
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