LONDON (Reuters) – Two British teenagers were found guilty on Wednesday of killing 16-year-old transgender girl Brianna Ghey in a “ferocious attack” in a park in northwest England earlier this year.
The court heard the boy and girl, who were 15 at the time of the murder and cannot be named because of their age, spent months plotting to kill someone and had a list of several potential victims who they knew.
Ghey, who had agreed to meet the girl in a local park, was stabbed 28 times with a hunting knife before her body was spotted by a couple walking their dogs.
Prosecutors said Ghey’s killers had shared hundreds of WhatsApp messages in the run-up to the murder, sharing fantasies about murder and torture, with the girl admitting she enjoyed watching videos about serial killers, murder and torture.
“The planning, the violence and the age of the killers is beyond belief. Brianna Ghey was subjected to a frenzied and ferocious attack and was stabbed 28 times in broad daylight, in a public park,” Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor Ursula Doyle of Crown Prosecution Service Mersey Cheshire said.
“Girl X and Boy Y appear to have been a deadly influence on each other and turned their dark fantasies about murder into a reality.”
Speaking outside court, Nigel Parr, Detective Inspector at Cheshire Police, described the killing as “a senseless murder committed by two teenagers who had an obsession with murder, whose only motivation in killing Brianna was to experience what this would be like.”
The pair will be sentenced after Christmas.
(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
